Conjunction Junction

So, I am watching the TV last night and this strange commercial comes up.  There is some guy dressed like Willy Wonka talking about the land of and (I won't mention the name of the product he was pushing because at The Blog we have a moderately firm policy of not doing product placement without serious financial compensation...which sadly never seems to come our way). 

For some unknown reason this weird commercial got me thinking about my childhood.  It may have been the use of that one word, and, that set me off down the hallways of days gone by.  "And" reminds me of Saturday mornings, a bowl of sugar coated sugar, and cartoons.  During the commercial breaks one network (again, no free product placements) would run the greatest PSA's of all time- Schoolhouse Rock.  Who said nothing good came out of the 70s (wait, I did.  Oops.)

A bit of context is in order here.  For a reason that I have never understood my family lived in a part of town where we could not receive the local PBS station.  Remember, this is pre-cable/satellite, so we were held hostage by those little rabbit ear on top of the tube.  Did my parents have an axe to grid with PBS?  Were they unwilling to pay when Big Bird came by to shake everyone in the neighborhood down?  Or did we really just not get the station?  I do not know, but I am certain that PBS was not part of my childhood.  Which means no Sesame Street, no Electric Company, nothing.  Any educational programing that my siblings and I received came on Saturday morning.  Thus the disproportionate influence that Schoolhouse Rock had on my life.

For those of you who are regular readers of The Blog, the following statement will come as no surprise - I am not very good with English grammar.  Whatever gene is required to diagram a sentence is missing in my DNA.  What little I know, and it is little, I learned on Saturday mornings.  Schoolhouse Rock was the beginning, middle, and end of my education in grammar.  Deeply impressed in my psyche is the ditty known as "Conjunction Junction."  Whenever I hear or read the words "and" "but" or "or" I think of a railroad yard.  Conjunctions connect things, or at least that is what the little conductor on "Conjunction Junction" told me.  Over and over again.  I had no reason to believe that the TV would lie to me.  Then again, it was Saturday morning, I was hyped up on processed sugar, and thus susceptible to believe most anything.

I still hold to the conviction that conjunctions connect things.  Yet, I also think that these simple words can define people and their relationship to God.  There are 'and", "but", and "or" relationships.  All three exist in Scripture, yet they are very different ways of understanding how God interacts with us, and how we live with God.  How?  Well, that is what we will be exploring over the next few days.  In the meantime, grab a bowl of your favorite kids cereal (once again, no free product placements).  A good sugar high is not just for kids.