The New Bus is a monthly look at what’s going on in the world from a heavenly, hopeful perspective. This month we look at music and the stock market…

A Song of Hope

This year, Google continued their annual look back of the “Year in Search” campaign. It’s basically where they look back at the year before, and discover what people were searching throughout 2020 in their Google search engine. With this campaign, they had Chicago gospel artist Peter CottonTale record an original song for the “2020 year in search” soundtrack.

The song is called “Together” and it featured Chance the Rapper, Cynthia Erivo, and the Chicago Children’s Choir. The chorus rings out:

“2020 been a ride

Because we lost more than we had to lose

And they talk choices we were forced to choose

In the mornin’ leave all your baggage

The answer you may not have it

But together in love we can find it

And in hand tell the storm

‘Get behind us!’

Together we gon’ get it together somehow.”

It’s a song of hope. And for all those who are silly enough to still have hope, we say cheers 

Later in the song, Chance the Rapper flows with these words, “We gon’ take the mask off the monster, we gon’ take snacks out the taxes, we gon’ take the lead out the tap,  the max out of the sentence, the ism out of the cap.”

You can hear the call for systemic change. And while change can be scary, here at Elisha’s Riddle we always remain hopeful, knowing that Christ is hidden behind the stages of history, working His magic to make all things new. We don’t always understand the ways of the Lord, or His timing, but like Peter, Chance, and the Chicago Children’s Choir, we pray that “we’ll get it together.”

A Shift in the Market

At the end of January, thousands of people gathered together to come against hedge funds in a unified effort at affecting the stock market. This is something billionaires and hedge funds do all the time behind the scenes, but this was first time a mass of ordinary people tried to do it. Through Reddit and other websites, they decided to help out companies that were being driven to destruction in the market by traditional big-time investors. This was met with a wave of censorship and counterattacks from Wall Street firms, government, and larger tech companies.

This story is still in development, but it represents a titanic shift in the market with people standing together against imbalances in the financial system. While the issue is not as black and white as this (there’s positives and negatives on both sides), nothing like this has ever happened in history. As large tech companies and governments band together to lock down and censor actions like these, such attacks will only backfire and produce even more moves of retaliation. The impact of this will be huge. Though rocky to start, we believe this will lead to more positive change in the financial realm.