On this day in 1971, the famous folk singer John Denver released his hit single, Country Roads. The song debuted on his RCA label named “Poems, Prayers, and Promises.” This album helped skyrocket Denver into the mainstream. This song has morphed into the state anthem of West Virginians and holds a special place for many mountaineers, but what is the story behind Country Roads? The song was the creation of a husband and wife songwriting team, Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. They were struggling musicians trying to make it big. They wanted to create one hit song that would impact the music industry. That song came in the form of County Roads. The inspiration for the song came after they left a wedding in Maryland. They were enjoying the drive through the winding roads and started to sing together. They instantly knew they had something, the problem was that the state of Maryland only had three syllables, and their song needed a state with four syllables. Taffy mentioned her home state of Massachusetts had the correct number of syllables and they started to craft a song based on it. But Massachusetts sounded clunky so they quickly changed to West Virginia. They said that it had a certain ring to it. The irony is that neither Billy nor Taffy had ever been to West Virginia. They wrote a song that would become West Virginia’s state national anthem without ever being in the state! Their original goal was to perform the song for Johnny Cash and sell it to him, but all of that changed in 1970. They were the opening act for Denver at a Club called the Cellar Door in Washington DC. They listened intently to Denver singing folk songs. They knew that Denver had the voice and the heart to bring their song to life. They introduced the song to Denver after the concert and he was smitten with it. They stayed up until the early hours of the morning tweaking it until it was the masterpiece that they were aiming for. Denver returned to the same club later in 1970 to sing the song for the first time. The result was astounding. The crowd was moved to tears and gave him a five-minute standing ovation. This continued every time he performed the song. The song became a part of American culture. It topped at number 2 on the Billboard charts in 1971 and became a gold-certified album.
The chorus opens up with the words "Country Roads, take me home, to a place, where I belong." Where does this country road lead us? To Maryland which inspired the song? Or maybe Massachusetts Taffy's home state which happened to have four syllables? Or to the mountain state of West Virginia? Or maybe home is somewhere else. For the believer our ultimate home is heaven. We trek through this world for a temporal time, though it might seem long, but as the old song says 'this world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through.' According to Paul, our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). But how can we have confidence that heaven is our home? Our confidence is rooted in the words of Jesus in John 14:1-2, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." We often get hung up on the word 'mansions.' We get this image that we are going to have a golden palace just over the hilltop, but that isn't what Jesus is saying. The Greek text makes it clear that there are many rooms in our Father's House (heaven) and one of them is ours if we trust in Christ as our Savior. The image that Jesus paints is that heaven is like one house and each believer gets a room. I would rather have a room in God's house than a mansion down the street, further away from His presence. A room in our Father's house symbolizes how near we will be to God in heaven. It's almost as if He is just down the hall. It paints a picture of how 'intimate' our relationship will be with the Father in glory. There will be no separation or boundary between us. According to the promise of Jesus, we are going to have a room in our Father's House. The troubles of this world can overwhelm us at times. Discouragement and disappointments mount, often taking our focus off heaven. Today, allow your eyes to move from the woes of the world and the screens that we hold and instead look to heaven. Realize, with an assurance that Christ has made the way. He holds the keys and has already opened the door. We are simply waiting until we head home. Let us be comforted to know that there is more than this temporal life, so much more, and we are already on the road heading home.
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