“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary,” writes Donald Kendall, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer PepsiCo. Success in life is usually hewn out of a proverbial rock and requires sweat, persistence, faith, tenacity and pride. The unfortunate reality is that many times some lazy loser is waiting on the sidelines to haul it all away, or at least take credit for your hard work. The truth is, we may never see the full fruit of our efforts, but hope and pray that our loved ones will benefit from our toil. If life’s ultimate goal is retirement, and then to sit around waiting for our heart to stop beating, I would rather be out there rocking until they peel the guitar away from my cold, dead hands.

Work has such a nasty connotation in our free-loading society. There is an attitude of entitlement that is pervasive in our culture. Several of the government programs meant to help the poor have only hindered folks from getting off of their rear ends and actually becoming a producer rather than a taker in society. I was raised in a hard-working, blue-collar household where you went to work after high school. There was none of this sitting around crap in my home. I left home to play music and, after 6 years of doing so, realized that my future was limited if I didn’t have a college education. So, at 25 years of age, and newly married, I re-started my freshman year (first attempt was in 1978, right out of high school) to begin a new 4-year journey as a professional student. Don’t get me wrong–I had two part-time jobs as well to provide income for my new family.

Author, Julia Cameron writes, “What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.” This statement, in my opinion, doesn’t equate “money comes to us” as wealth, necessarily. The wonderful thing about America is that we have options. Marco Rubio, the newly elected senator from Florida, in his acceptance speech said of his late father,

“No matter where I go, whatever title I may achieve, I will always be the son of exiles and will always be the heir of two generations of unfulfilled dreams…He [my father] grew up largely in a society where what you were going to be when you grew up was decided for you. This is like almost every other place in the world. Think about what that means. That means that before you are even born, how far you’re going to get to go in life is decided for you by who your parents are or are not. He was fortunate enough to make it here to America where he was never able to capture his own dreams of his own youth. Instead, he made it the mission of his life to ensure that his children would have every opportunity he did not, that every door that was closed for him would be open for them, that the day would never come for them that came for him: The day when he realized that his own dreams would not be possible, and so now life was about opening the pathways for his children. This story I know well, and it verifies to me the greatness of our country. Because tonight, with your vote, you have elected his son to the United States Senate.”

My goal in work is to finish what God has given my hands to do on earth with skill and excellence, to bring Him glory, to provide for my wife and family, and ultimately to leave this world a better place than the one into which I was born.

Two nights ago I woke at 3:45 AM with a song that wouldn’t go away. Funny, it was one I never heard before. I decided to get up, go to my studio, spark up the Mac and, with my acoustic, begin to make sense of the melody that was rolling around in my head.

As I wrote recently, I can easily lose a song that comes to me in a dream. This time the tune was so persistent it wouldn’t take “later” for an answer. I remember the same thing happened when I wrote “Garments of Praise.” That song came to me when I was going through an emotionally tough time. I sang the lyric and melody in my mind as I pondered Isaiah 61:3. It was so comforting in that even as I was feeling lousy, by focusing on God’s view of my situation, I could actually feel hope and relief.

The same thing happened the other night. I was dreaming about being in a worship service at our church. This time I wasn’t leading worship but was in the congregation. I was imagining that we were gathered at the altar, waiting for the Spirit of the Lord to fall. Actually, it was similar to the Biblical scene from Isaiah 6 where the prophet saw the Lord high and lifted up, the train of His robe filling the temple. The phrase “saints and angels singing together” came to my mind. That was it! I had a song.

Again, it doesn’t happen as often as I would like, but I’ll take the early-morning interruption of sleep to jot down this inspiration from heaven.

I am a huge fan of Neil Young. I don’t particularly like it when he complains about the US, yet continues to live here as a Canadian citizen. But when it comes to his music, he’s up there on my favorites list.

I was introduced to Neil’s unique music when my older brother, Rob, brought home both of the albums “Harvest,” and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Deja Vu.” The song “A Man Needs a Maid,” from the 1972 “Harvest” record, floored me, even as a young teen. Of course, “Heart of Gold” took both the nation and me by storm with this, his only #1 hit song. My musical life was changed during those moments listening to this great artist.

In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine listed “Harvest” as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All time at #78. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine selected “Heart of Gold” as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, stating:

“Harvest yielded Young’s only Number One hit, ‘Heart of Gold,’ and helped set the stage for the Seventies soft-rock explosion — both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sing on the album. Along with Young, they were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash’s variety show the week that Harvest was cut with an odd group of accomplished session players that included bassist Tim Drummond, who had played with James Brown. The sound was Americana — steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo — stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed. The standout tracks include ‘Old Man’ and ‘The Needle and the Damage Done.’”

When some first heard the group America, and it’s mega-hit “A Horse With No Name,” they thought it was a Neil Young recording. Young’s influence, going back to his previous group, the Buffalo Springfield, along with other groups like the Byrds, the Dillards and singer Linda Ronstadt, had unmistakeably contributed to the birth of new groups like America and the Eagles. This fresh take on American roots music began as a ripple, then a wave, and rose to tsunami strength known as the Southern California Sound. It was an amalgam of bluegrass, country, folk, gospel, rock, and a hefty dose of vocal harmony and instrumental prowess . The new sonic hybrid captivated radio airwaves through to the end of the decade when punk and New Wave began to take the top spots on the Billboard charts. Neil Young was at the center of it all from the beginning, and continues to release great music today.

I saw an uncanny Neil Young impression artfully done by Jimmy Fallon the other day. It was dead-on! In it, Jimmy nails the essence of Neils style while singing the song made famous on American Idol, “Pants On the Ground.” Neil may be an acquired taste for some, but to me, a child of the 60′s and 70′s, he is a genius.