Billy the Bum...

So what does a blog title like this belong in a Passionate Spirituality blog for? Well it's been a new favorite, but the song has to be about thirty years old. Recently a fine song writer and singer from Milwaukee, put out a cover CD of one of my favorite artists, John Prine. John is one of the best writers, Hello in There can touch a nerve, but he'll never be known as a Christian song writer... maybe Christ helps us see through the eyes of people who don't always market themselves under that title. Again, this song really touched me. I some how missed really knowing John's Diamonds in the Rough LP, and when I heard Jeffrey cover this song it was like, NEW.. ;-) The last verse is really why it belongs in this blog.

God does like to hit you softly with the same message until you really say, you yeah... now I get it... First I run into the song from Jeffrey, then I run into the real vinyl LP from John at the Antique Center, and then I read this blog about the Pastor doing what Dave Woggen did at one of our NCD weekends. I do feel the passion burning to help people at our church, but we all need to understand that God's uses his two by four on our thick heads, and it still sometimes doesn't get through.



Billy The Bum

Billy the bum lived by the thumb
And sang of the hobo’s delight
He’d prove he could run
Twice as fast as the sun
By losing his shadow at night
Now he loved every girl
In this curly headed world
But no one will know it seems
For two twisted legs and a childhood disease
Left billy just a bum in his dreams

Chorus:
And he was just a gentle boy
A real florescent light
Cried pennies on sunday morning
Laughs nickels on saturday night
And your bullets they can’t harm him
Nor your knives tear him apart
Humiliation killed him
God bless his little heart

Now he lived all alone
In a run down home
Near the side of the old railroad track
Where the trains used to run
Carrying freight by the ton
And blow the whistle as billy’d wave back
But the children around billy’s home town
Seemed to have nothin’ better to do
Then run around his house
With their tongues from their mouth
And make fun of that cripped old fool

(repeat chorus)

Now some folks they wait
And some folks they pray
For jesus to rise up again
But none of these folks
In their holy cloaks
Ever took billy on as a friend
For pity’s a crime
And it ain’t worth a dime
To a person who’s really in need
Just treat ’em the same
As you would your own name
Next time that your heart starts to bleed

(repeat chorus)