Don’t let anything knock your props out from under you
Always keep your mind clear, let your plans come out of mistakes
These are the plans and nothing can tear down
Made out of things that have already been torn down
Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine
Out of order
Music is the language of the mind that travels
Carries the key to the laws of time and space
Lonesome train whistling down the silent wail of wind
Life is the sound, creation has been a song
Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine
Out of order
Quick to manufacture their schemes and ideas
Faster than any turn a tide can wash you out
Word is the music and the people are the song
Tomorrows chances feel like a singing god
Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine
Out of order.
Hoping Machine — Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Jay Farrar
Years ago, Woodie Guthrie wrote this song called Hoping Machine. I grew up listening to folk music — Pete Seeger, Peter Paul & Mary, Woody and Arlo Guthrie were all fair game — either on record albums or on the radio. I cam across this one the other day and the lyrics struck me.
St. Paul tells us in Romans 12:12 – “Rejoice in hope. Be patient in trials. Pray all the time.” Gosh, that is not always an easy way to live. But what he is saying is to keep the hoping machine going because it causes you to experience joy. It’s easy to get weighed down by everything you see and hear swirling around you. Choosing to “live above the fray” is not always as easy as water off a duck’s back, you know? I see so much division in religion, politics, social media, between race, gender, sexuality. There’s a lack of love. A lack of understanding. Certainly a lack of hope.
And so, sometimes, the old hoping machine
just.
grinds.
to.
a.
halt.
As I read the lyrics again, I thought about how often I allow the daily calamities knock my dreamer and hoping machine out of order. Because so much is going on all the time. The daily news of life can be a barrage of negativity and if you let it, it will knock the props out from under you. It muddies the mind and causes you to lose your focus and your grip.
Turn your focus upward. The scriptures speak of hope, that transcends the swirling waters of madness and muddy muck of negativity. In the psalms, the Hebrew poet David said, “I was pulled out of the pit of despair, my feet were stuck in the slimy muck; I was set upon a firm rock and now my footsteps are steady” (Psalm 40:2). David was given hope. Purpose. His hoping machine was cranked back up, as it were.
St. Paul continued to encourage in his letter to the Romans in 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!”
And the writer of Hebrews said, “Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise” (10:23).
So don’t lose hope. Don’t lose your grip or get your hope knocked out from under you by the swirl of earthly calamities. There is something and someone bigger who knows what’s up and has a better plan in place for you. The prophet Isaiah said it like this: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”