Yesterday

At our weekly ‘Singing for Wellbeing’ group we often sing old songs that we remember from our youth. Brogan, our guitarist, is a massive Beatles fan – so we often include a Beatles’ song. This week it was ‘Yesterday’.

Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly
I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shadow hangin’ over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday

I love the simplicity of the song, telling a story in just eighty-four words. It was one of the first songs I learnt to play on my guitar, and one I’ve often returned to over the years. The experience that Paul McCartney describes is common to us all…

I look back to yesterday. Things were going fine – ‘All my troubles seemed so far away’. Suddenly, unexpectedly something changes, and my life can never be the same. For McCartney it involved someone he loved leaving him.

For folks I know it’s been a bereavement, a life-changing diagnosis, an affair discovered, an unexpected redundancy, an addiction, eviction… Yesterday everything was ticking along fine – I felt good; today I feel disappointment, fear, anxiety, anger, pain, guilt, shame … ‘Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be’.  

This morning I read Paul-not-McCartney’s well-known words: ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ Yesterday, when my troubles were far away, it was easy to enjoy love, joy and peace… Today, with the shadow of disappointment, fear and anxiety hanging over me, I can still know love, joy and peace.

Paul McCartney had a good yesterday, is hiding away today, and can’t face tomorrow. Paul-not-McCartney, by the presence of God’s Spirit, can know love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control yesterday, today and tomorrow, whatever life throws at him.

And so can I.