Just one of those things...

It's been a busy weekend. I really just want a day off, but that won't happen until Saturday. So I just have to live with it. There was a lot of good in the weekend. It's just that I spend so much of it exhusted and crankey, I'm still just a little kid is so many ways. This all started Wednesday when I drove up to Milton, PA, which is about 2 1/2 hours away, to hear the chorale sing. I needed that...I really needed that. It was refreshing in a way, and in another way it gave me just a little bit of closure that I needed but never really realized. It's one thing to sit in on a practice, there where many times when I was in practice that I felt like I was just sitting in, but it's completly different to sit through a concert. I've never sat back and heard the choral before...and they where good. I know that people say that it's never the same if your not singing with the group, but they tend to say it in away that makes them sound like they were the reason the chorale sounded the way it did and that without them the group is somehow less. Proff perpetuates those feelings and I completly understand why, it's hard to invest as much as he does into that many people and not feel some great lose after four or five year when they move on to other things. The thing is, no it's not the same, and it never will be, and that is a good thing. Certain people I remember saying the perticular statement about, said it with a distain that I don't think that even they noticed. They hadn't moved on, but in there minds were forced out. But Wednesday night, getting to see Nate and Maria, Proff, Gale, Dan, Tony, and Jenn helped me let go. My personal problem was that my last year I was the only 5th year, and in many ways I was everyone's older brother, or grandpa to some (that stopped quickly). There was respect for me that was given automatically, proff took my advice, freshman to senior asked me questions, even among the officers I was the one that went to proff with questions. It was odd to me that I was in that kind of position, but it was even how I saw myself to a certain degree. Even a year later when I was back on campus for a couple of days, people asked me what I thought and asked what I thought they could do to make it better. I had told them that I washed my hands of the organization, but then continued to dole out advice like usual. But Wednesday it was gone. Talking to Gale afterwards he asked me directly, as only gale can,
"did it bring back memories?"
"Yeah, yeah it did."
"Any tears?"
"No, only good memories."
"Good."
It's nice to have the answer that they're looking for from time to time.

Thrusday was technically my day off, and for all intesive purposes it was. I had drive up to Reading, again about two hours way. Now I say I had to because a friend of mine was in Reading. This isn't a begruding had to, this is a "if I don't I'll kick myself for not doing it." I'd not seen Jordan in probably four years, and it was a great time to just catch up and see what each other had been doing. The time spent was great, except for me faigning guilt about not flying out to San Diago to visit him. It's not that I don't want to, but I just havn't had the time or the money. It was a good time, a really good time.

There's a song that a local Christian radio station plays, What could be better by 33 miles. It's actually a rather normal christian song. It talks about heaven and what could be better than living in heaven, It's just a normal song...and that's what bothers me about it. I heard the song again on Saturday while I was driving through York and it suddenly hit me exactly what this song was talking about. More than talking about heaven it talked about already being in heaven. Here's the chorus:
I’m living in the days ahead
I’m already dancing on the streets of gold
Can’t stop celebrating in my soul
I’m living in the days ahead
Nothing on earth could ever compare
Can’t wait for the day when I get there
When I see Jesus face to face
Tell me what could be better
Tell me what could be better

Now I know I'm reading more into the lyrics that I should, and it's just a normal song that was writing by a new well meaning christian based band, but I don't think that this is right. I hear the phrase, Be in the world but not of the world (an exact phrase that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist in Scripture), and I start to think that songs like 'I'll fly away' and the one above arn't getting ahead of themselves just a little bit. Like a mentioned before, I don't believe that the exact phrase above can be found in scripture (or at least the parts that I've been reading latly) there is certainly more than enough scripture to support the phrase. In John 17 we read Christ's prayer for us his followers. Christ says over and over that he doesn't want God to take us out of the world but to protect us from it. He prays for our unity. He prays in certain words that we would be in the world, but because we are from him, not of the world. Now you could accuse me of being to much of the world and on certain occations you'd be very correct. I'm not going to defend those actions, I can't and any attemp to do so would be futile under the light of scripture. My only defence is that Scripture is vague on certain issues, and I do toe the line on a lot issues. What can I say, I'm slow. I'm just a little confussed by all of this talk about already being in heaven. I think Paul says it better than I can:

"12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

15All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16Only let us live up to what we have already attained."

Press towards the goal, be focused on the goal, but continue running the race. I'm just not convinced of the benefits of living with my head in the clouds while people are dying for attention here on the ground.
A.T.H.