40. The Blackout City Kids - "Wrong Turn"


The Blackout City Kids or "TBOCK" are 20th Century Fox Recording artists that combine the art of DJ Mashups with live instruments and video to create a truly unique musical experience. Often compared to artists like Girltalk and Keys N Krates, The Blackout City Kids take the art of creating Mashups to a new and exciting level by creating original Mashups and incorporating live instruments, vocals, and DJ production and having it all synced to a live video show. In addition to creating Mashups, The Blackout City Kids also write, record and produce original songs for 20th Century Fox and other film companies. "Wrong Turn" is the name given to a franchise of six American horror films created by Alan B. McElroy. All six films are set in West Virginia and as in all horror films the plots are scary and full of suspense. This song is the title track to the film.

This is not the usual rock track that I would have chosen to blog about in the this series of devotions. Never the less this track by The Blackout City Kids grabbed my attention. "Wrong Turn" It is full of a kind of melancholic remorse. Of course it's been written for a horror film but there is hidden depths . It's the heartfelt feeling of someone who knows that his choices in life have led that person to make real mistakes. Mistakes that have caused life altering changes on the face of it seems they cannot get out of. 


Take a bruised chin take a skinned knee
take a million hits before I ever concede
scream is that all you got as I bleed

I always come back, I’ll never disappear
even if I take my final breaths here
I need you know
dont fade away on me
cause I made a mistake,

I think I took a wrong turn
somewhere along the way,
I sealed my fate
and all I know is your gone,
yeah your gone away
I’ll never touch your face
I’ll never see you again

And I watch each day through the falling snow,
the dead men walking through their high’s and low’s

and I stare at the cold and I feel their pain,
i watch as their life slowly fades away.
I see their eyes, they’re pearcing mine,
there’s nothing I can say

Cause I made a mistake,
I think I took a wrong turn
somewhere along the way,
I sealed my fate and all I know is your gone,
yah your gone away ill never touch your face
I’ll never see you again

Cause I made a mistake,
I think I took a wrong turn
somewhere along the way,
I sealed my fate and all I know is your gone,
yah your gone away ill never touch your face
I’ll never see you again



"Cause I made a mistake, I think I took a wrong turn" How many times have we done that. A few years ago while doing to visit someone in a remote part of Yorkshire, I took a turn that according to the map was the only turn I could take to get to the village that I was going and I ended up on a road where grass was growing up the middle of the road.  There was no place to turn the car around as the road started to become a track. If I had met someone coming in the other direction it would have been impossible. This turn that I took was unplanned for and unnecessary. I could have slowed down had a real good look before I committed myself and the car to going in this direction. After a while and some re navigation I got back on the right road and reached my destination, I was very late but very glad to be there as it was winter and the night was closing in quite fast. It would have been a different story again if I had got on the wrong road in the dark.

Taking a wrong turn on a road is nothing compared to taking a wrong turn in life. Making a choice and heading off in the wrong direction can be for some people a decision of no return. From making that wrong choice life and circumstances can rock us. Hurts and brokenness can come from wrong turns that stick with us for the rest of our days.  Sometimes taking that wrong turn can seem like the only turn we can make but before long we regret making the choice to head in the direction that we are going in.  Some wrong turns can have us feeling remorseful wishing that we had never been so hard headed in the first place. Many a person with drugs or alcohol problems are remorseful for taking the wrong turn into their condition. Many a person in a marriage break up are remorseful over the "wrong turn" choices that they have made in their marriage and now they simply cannot turn around, they feel trapped. Many a person in business regrets over financing themselves making a "wrong turn" that now is costing them their reputation and their time, energy and of course their finance.

There are many characters in the bible who took a wrong turn. Eve takes a wrong turn when she listens to a snake in the garden. Jonah takes a wrong turn and ends up in some serious trouble. When God calls him to preach revival in Nineveh, he runs in the opposite direction. Joseph makes a wrong turn when he boasts before his brothers. Israel continue to take wrong turns according to the old testament and God sends them prophets to waken them up to the fact. I could take a number of people and talk about their lives and "Wrong Turns" for me though David stands out as one who took a wrong turn and had to live with the consequences of that wrong turn for the rest of his life.

King David takes a wrong turn when he sleeps with Bathsheba and then plots to kill her husband.
2 Samuel 11:1-17. "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.” So David sent this word to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent him to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master’s servants and did not go down to his house. David was told, “Uriah did not go home.” So he asked Uriah, “Haven’t you just come from a military campaign? Why didn’t you go home?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!” Then David said to him, “Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. At David’s invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master’s servants; he did not go home. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died"
David tried to get out of the "Wrong Turn" by making a succession of "Wrong Turns" He tried to cover his tracks. He tried to wriggle out of the responsibility for sleeping with another man's wife and then plotting his killing. Heady stuff indeed. The story continues. After Bathsheba's husband Uriah is done away with David takes Bathsheba in his home and she becomes David's wife. she bears him a son called Solomon. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.  David is called to account by Nathan the prophet for this sordid part of David's life. We see David's real feelings about what he had done in Psalm 51, which is a psalm of lament and remorse.
Psalm 51 "Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
 
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
 
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
 
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
 
Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
 
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
 
Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Saviour,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
 
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
May it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
 
Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings offered whole;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
David's "Wrong Turn" was catastrophic and there seemed no way back from it. But just read the 1st chapter of Matthew's Gospel where Jesus is mentioned to be a son of David. Even though there was a wrong turn taken by David - God is bigger and he has bigger plans. Even though we may make a mistake and take a "wrong turn" - God is bigger and his plans are bigger. when we continue to make a series of wrong turns to deal with the first wrong turn - God is bigger and his plans are bigger. When we come to him humbly and contrite like David, Jesus can begin the work of restoration and re-building. all things are possible with God. If you've taken the wrong turn there is still hope and Jesus is only a prayer away.

In Isaiah 30:21 we find these thoughts about direction and navigating through life "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left." also in John's gospel 16:13 …when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth… At all of life’s intersections, we have God’s Word and God’s spirit to help us make the right turns and not the wrong ones - Look at the map carefully, don't make rash decisions and my prayer would be that Jesus will keep you on the right track........after all It's Jesus who says "I am the Way"


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