Smiling and Smiling

Alright, so I wake up this morning late, not too late though, and take a shower and get all ready to go to school when I open the door to my car and notice that my non-working sunroof has leaked again. I had to run and get a few towels and let them suck up the standing water and such. I’ll probably put some kind of sealant on the sunroof window tomorrow when everything is completely dried and there’s no threat of rain. The sunroof had leaked before but we cleaned out the little drainage holes and all, so it wouldn’t leak anymore. I have no clue what could have got in there to clog it up again. That kind of stuff just drives me up the wall because I just don’t want anything to happen to my car and all. I just need to trust God with it though, my lifes in His hands.

Moving along … yesterday before church I checked out iTickets website for some reason and low and behold … the Falling Up concert has been cancled. While that ticked me off, I waited for “conformation”. I let my mom call the people up while I was at school and all today. The church said they cancled just a week prior to the event, and later — around 7 o’clock or so, someone calls back from the events sponser as to why it was cancled. The reasoning made me very mad. I’m not mad at the sponser, I’m very happy and excited at what they’re doing and hope they don’t give up — I’m mad at this general area. The event was cancled as only 4 tickets — yes only FOUR tickets — were sold. Three for me … and obviously someone else was going. Now sure, that understandable. While I’ve not heard the other side of the story, I did hear my mom’s retelling of why the event was canceled. The local radio stations in the Montgomery area wouldn’t run ads. The local churches wouldn’t sponser it. I guess over all they had no support and word of mouth only works so much.

Now this all brings me to the church. The church is suppose to be a body of people supporting each other. Yet it’s like the church is only supporting itself. It’s not reaching out. I saw so many people at school and when I said I listen to Christian Rock most thought that meant Third Day. Third Day, for those who need informing, is a band from Atlanta. That’s probably the only reason everyone knows them. They have some very powerful songs — but the lyrics are really the best part about their music. A large majority of church today likes to push Christian Rock, Rap, Hard Rock, and etc out the window and DISCOURAGE them from listening to such. Look, the times have changed. The church has to change with the times. As much as I hate the music class I’m in, I’ve learned something … durring the reformation hymns became a part of church largely in part due to Martin Luther and his protestant reformation. The catholic church was faced with a challenge — and they, as well, had a change in music. A vast majority of what Christian Rock entails NEEDS to be in church today. Sometimes we just need to cry out to God — and the word cry there means to shout (Ps. 18:6, for example). I know many songs that hold so much emotion and passion for God that needs to be put into church — and these are deeper than your grandmothers hymns, these are songs full of the hearts of todays youth and young adults. The fact is, people are still listening to secular music when there is much better Christian music focused on a living Holy God. The sad part about it is that parts of the church condem this. The areas that are accepting it are seeing revival.

It’s kind of interesting that the last major revival (the reformation and the revivals that spawned the 400 years or so after it) started with new music, opposition to how the church of the time was run (it’s leaders and the political structure it entailed), and it vastly started with youth and young adults. Martin Luther became a monk around the age of 22, and declared his intolerance of the Roman Catholic church around the age of 34. William Tyndall had his masters degree by the age of 21 and could speak fluently in eight languages (so well that people said it was hard to tell it wasn’t his native language), he was still young at the age of 41 when he died (a maryter).

Okay, thirty minutes later and I’m studying church history. Very interesting. The first Bible every printed in America was in 1663 by John Eliot, which was written in the Native American language. I’ll have a lot of stuff to look at now, this site is packed full of information.

It’s time for bed now …