I went through to PE to watch my friend's band play. There is something about musicians that can make the rest of us feel somewhat inadequate; they are these larger than life personalities that just attract the girls and fame. We are just drawn to stand in awe of them. As if something inside us was made to worship things that are bigger than us. We are almost genetically made with a worship hole inside each of us; we can fill it with whatever we want as long as we fill it, but most of the time those worship items only keep us entertained as long as we are giving of ourselves to the cause. Skating gives me great acceptance and makes me feel sweet cool as long as I am skating, but the stoke of a trick only last so long. If I want to feel that rush, indulge in making something worthy of praise, I need to give it its worth by making the effort and putting into it. God does not need me to give Him his worth, He is God regardless of what I put in or not and he remains worthy of praise regardless of if I put something in or not. He offers acceptance regardless of if I am making the effort.
I have never wanted to be a musician really; I suppose I knew from before I could walk that I was tone deaf and musically challenged. I love singing though, and when I was much younger than today I would sometimes find myself attending worship services on Friday nights at our church. There would also be this “cool” youth band that would play and we would sing along. I remember one night when the vibe was getting to be the slow emotional tug at our hearts deal. But all I wanted to do was sing, so I was standing there singing at the top of my voice expressing all I had to God. Before I could get swept away in the Spirit I got shouted at for making noise; the noise referring to my singing that did not quite fit into the ‘church etiquette’ of the eve. I felt betrayed and heartbroken that I got in trouble for wanting to shout my love for God out. Persecuted for my faith; a bit dramatic now but that’s how I felt as a young lad. It was more my stubbornness and bad attitude that kept me coming back to change ‘church etiquette’ by water bombing the Valentine's dinner eve or having a fist fight in front of the pastor's wife’s car, with her headlights acting like spot lights. I would like to think I won that fight, but don’t even think I got in one punch and I ended up with a bloody and swollen lip. The guy also had a broken finger. The finger was broken before the fight even started, so I can't take the credit for that even, so technically I lost a fight to a one-armed bandit.
I think song writing is one of the few professions that you actually get paid to bare your heart and soul, and maybe that’s what draws us to singers so magnetically; they seem to live what we feel. They seem to have this identity about themselves that actually they can sleep at night with who they are. They leave us feeling rather numb in our own skins, longing for more.
Who we are always seems so important to all we ask. How we see ourselves affects how we interact with each other. We see ourselves as greater than others, or perhaps less than others. Very seldom do we see ourselves as equals to each other. Equals in how we are created, and more importantly who created us. If we are all created in the image of God, then surely we share a commonality inside each of us. If God is the ultimate of beings, a Chuck Norris meets supernatural meets superhero meets Rambo, that would be the dominant gene with in us. That our selfish nature that causes others and ourselves pain is not what should be characterising us and others. Or impacting how we see each other, but we should follow in Mother Theresa’s words that everyone is Jesus and we ought to love them as that.
At the bands evening me and my lovely wife were walking in the street, when we saw four guys walking towards us; in the nicest way, they looked like trouble. My wife got a bit anxious and grabbed her bag a little bit tighter and asked if we could go back. I, the ever caring husband, reassured her that she was being silly and everything was okay, already having assessed the situation that there were only four of them and they were much smaller than me and if I hit the biggest guy first we might be okay. After they walked by and nothing happened and the tension drifted away because of the beautiful surroundings we found ourselves in, I could not help but wonder why we as individuals are so instinctively inclined to think the worst of people. To live in fear of everyone, a fear that stops us from loving people like they were Jesus. Fair enough, some of our fears are real, and living in South Africa in today’s times there are definitely things we need to take into account, especially having a wife. However, I think we are sold lies about the people around us by the evilness inside us and the devil sells us these fears.
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