God’s voice…
You know, one of the best sounds in life is the sound of God’s voice. Whether it’s conviction or encouragement…I love hearing His voice. It seems like I’ve been hearing it a lot lately. The last time I heard it was after I left Loreanne’s house last night. Well, let me back up. Allow me to briefly review the highlights of my weekend. Friday I went to work (blah) then I met up with Loreanne and Kenny to play tennis. After a few hits we decided that we’d rather go chill and watch a movie (original huh? haha). So we met up at my house and watched “Along came the spider”. Saturday, I got another unusual awakening from my mom (don’t ask) and I had to cancel my plans to go out to lunch with my buddy Johan and start going through my closet and packing to go back to school. That evening Loreanne came over and we had our Bible study. Quinn had called a bit earlier that evening wondering if I wanted to meet up with him at Starbucks to hang out. So Loreanne and I did that. After Starbucks, we went and goofed around at Walmart until they closed. Then we just drove around looking for mischief, but we didn’t really find any…but it was fun! The next morning I got up and went to teach my sunday school class. It was a really powerful session. I talked with them about 9/11, (which as many of you know, is a very sensitive subject for me) and about how we need to love our enemies and excercise the power of prayer. I loved that morning, I feel like God really spoke through me. After the lesson, the staff people met up for a meeting and then I rushed back to my house to change and meet Andrea. We stopped by the grocery store on our way to the concert where the checker guy commented on Andrea’s shirt which said “Rub my tummy for good luck” (it had a picture of a Buddah on it). It was funny, the guy said something like “that shirt could get a lot of guys arrested”…haha. We got to Hoobastank / 311 concert without getting lost (Andrea and I were really excited about that because neither of us are very good with direction, haha). The concert was awesome and I intended to walk away from it with no regrets. The last concert I went to I walked away regretting not getting a t-shirt and not getting an autograph from the drummer of Dashboard Confessional. Anyway, that’s another story. So I got a hoobastank t-shirt and Loreanne got me a poster. I was super excited about that. (By the way, if you want to read more about this, check out ‘trademehalos’ journal – she was there too!) So yea, there was an interesting mix of culture at the concert because there were rap/hip hop groups there as well as rockers. Oh, and two different times, random strangers came up and rubbed Andrea’s tummy, haha. And it seemed like everywhere we sat, we ended up next to someone who was drunk or smoking weed. Yuck! But we still had tons of fun. Afterwards we went to Loreanne’s house to watch the Rookie. It was an okay movie, kind of slow for my taste. But it was cute.
Okay, now here’s where I got my latest revelation from God. Well, actually it’s one of those things that you learn a long time ago, but it’s like you have this sudden revelation where you learn it all over again from a different perspective. Does that make sense? Oh well, anyhow, I had brought my camera to the concert but I had forgotten to take pictures! How stupid is that! I was so angry with myself because I really wanted pictures of hoobastank and 311 (especially when 311 did this awesome drum sequence). And I also feel bad because I know that Loreanne really wanted pictures too. So it’s like I let two people down because of my slowness. So I went home from her house last night with a really heavy weight of regret on my shoulders. But as I was getting ready for bed and having my quiet time, I was having a really hard time getting over it and I started thinking, why was that so important to me? Why was I freakin’ out about it? Why is a photograph so valuable? All these kinds of questions paraded through my head. Then it struck me…what exactly did I value? What were the things that I occupied my time with? I started to evalutate my life and I realized that I was placing a lot of value on the wrong things. I won’t go any deeper into this. But I wasn’t at the point I should have been. It was quite the quiet time last night. But I just really felt the need to share that with all you lovely people out there and encourage you to listen to God’s voice…even if what He is saying is stuff you’ve heard a million times before. Well, this is getting kinda long…so I’m going to say goodbye and take care till next time. Here is my pearl of wisdom for the day (unless of course I think of a better one later): Don’t wear a demin one-piece that is too tight…it will inevitably burst at the seams leading to an embarrassing exit and no-doubt some interesting improvising from a friend. (This was a lesson I learned at the concert…yes, that means we saw somebody who hadn’t learned this yet, haha).
