I Heard It on the Radio - “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries”

I Heard It on the Radio - “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries”

THE YEAR IS 1931.

Finding a job is nearly impossible as U.S. unemployment tops 8 million.

What little money people had put aside for a rainy day has evaporated. Another 2,300 banks have failed this year, on top of the more than one thousand banks that closed in 1930.

And food is scarce; the Dust Bowl era enters year two, forcing thousands of farmers to abandon their homes and livelihood.

People are out of work. Out of money. Out of food. And most are running out of hope.

But on the radio, listeners can let a peppy little tune penned by Buddy DeSylva and Lew Brown cheer them, at least for a moment. The songwriting duo remind their listeners to keep their financial losses and material possessions in perspective: despite all our work and worry, we won’t take our stuff with us in the end. “Life is just a bowl of cherries,” they sing, so “live and laugh at it all.”^a

Good advice even today, more than seventy-five years later! Although prices are up, the dollar is down, and our retirement fund is shrinking, we live in a time of great economic prosperity compared to our parents and grandparents. I wonder: If the financial bottom were to fall out from under us, as it did them, would we demonstrate the same character and determination they did? Would we be able to live and laugh at everything?

I don’t know, but what a good reminder for those of us who get caught up in the acquisition and laying up of wealth. Let’s all remember that we’re not even renting our stuff on earth—it was God’s before we got here and it will be his when we’re gone.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. (Matthew 6:19, NASB)

Because I know they’re not mine in the first place, I think I’ll borrow another bowl of cherries—and spit out the pits.

^a Lew Brown and Buddy G. DeSylva, “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” 1931.