The other day I mentioned the “more songs like this” feature of Apple Music. You play an album and, when it’s done, Apple Music keeps playing random songs along the same lines.
I had lost touch with Bryn Haworth and was curious enough to play an album he released in 2010, which was very tasty indeed. The album ended, and before I could pick something else, the algorithm began to play “Turning Thirty” by Randy Stonehill.
One of the highlights of the 1983 album Equator, “Turning Thirty” is a lovely ballad by the contemporary Christian music icon about the fact that he was, well, turning 30 years old. I hadn’t heard the song in a very long time; it was good to be reintroduced all these years later.
Like me, Stonehill is now living his eighth decade on this planet, and while he was writing about the 1980s, the last verse of the song still resonates all these years later, perhaps even more so:
Oh, the eighties look like tough times.
The world is turning sour,
So I’ll keep on serving Jesus
And await the final hour,
And though I’ve often failed Him
In these thirty rocky years,
His mercy brought me this far
And his love has dried my tears, I’m turning thirty.
