Friday, May 26, 2006

Comfort

I tend to be a bit sadistic. Not that I'm outright a fan of pain, but that I have a personal grudge against comfort. I don't trust it. It's lied to me too many times. Comfort has played the con artist, posing as a motivator and a goal, but never paid what it promised. It's also claimed things were good when in fact they were about to go horribly wrong. Comfort has also been the Trojan horse for numbness and a host of flawed charachter.

But is it completely wrong? That's a question I've never asked before.

Can I forgive comfort?

posted by Scott # 10:52 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Take Five

Once I heard a song. It was a fun song. Uplifting. It had a unique beat. It surprised me and it stuck with me. But the song had no words.

Time passed.

I head the song again. Now it was on a commercial for Infinity. This is back when infinity was a new brand. I heard the song every day or so for a while. It still had no words. It still haunted me.

Then one day I discovered it. I'm not sure how. I think I was at Barnes & Noble and they were playing it. It was Take Five by Dave Brubeck.

That's a moment that defines what Joy is.

Today I was going up to speak to some friends. I was with a guy that I hardly knew up until today. He's one of the pastors at our church and I've served with him before, but today was different because it was just two guys who love Jesus and are on their way to speak about serving Jesus. We must have known we were friends deep down when we started thinking about how singing Micheal W. Smith's "Friends" would make a great point for his sermon.

In the midst of that I remembered that song. It was a reminder of being in search of something with no way to describe it; searching for something but having no way of finding it on my own. Helpless yet searching.

And being the connection-minded, question-asking, would-like-to-be-Eastern man that I am I put that into the context of God revealing Himself. Isn't that the ultimate definition of looking for meaning in this life. It rings true with the idea of pursuing God; helpless in most ways, but on occasion your ear catches those familiar notes -- the beat that isn't quite 4/4 -- and all you can hope is that someone can make sense of what you're hearing because you want to have access to that at more than just the whim of an Infinity commercial or the clerk at Barnes & Noble.

I entertained the thought of dropping that into the talk I was going to give. I ended up choosing not to. I wonder in hindsight if the talk could have been better had I listened to the voice and shared it despite it's having no place in the outline. I guess I wonder if someone in that room was looking for the tune.

Which is why I want to share it now. Missed opportunities can be haunting sometimes. Just like the beat to a song that has no words.

posted by Scott # 9:19 PM 0 comments