On Friday night Michael and I rode our bikes downtown to Zilker Park to see if we could hear The Black Keys outside the fence. (You may call us cheap but I call us smart.) We found a nice little spot under a giant oak tree and in between the sounds of the street preacher on our right and the dubstep bass coming from the stage to our left, we could actually make out the Black Keys fairly well.
The number of people just LEAVING the park was overwhelming. Michael said it reminded him of blood pumping through an artery. I'm not sure why you'd pay so much for a ticket and not stay for the headliner, who knows. Everytime I find myself in a massive crowd of people, especially downtown, I'm reminded just how obnoxious and annoying people can be. Maybe it's that being in a massive crowd makes people feel invisible or inconsequential which leads them to believe they can act like tremendous morons and it doesn't matter.
Laying on our little blanket watching people stagger and slur, I became aware of how different my life has become. I got a sense of what it means to be in the world but not of the world. The truth is that most people can't relate to my life, that I would move to an apartment complex across town in order to live in a community of people that I hadn't met and who I had little in common with except a passion to tell people the gospel. That I would wake up at 5:30 a.m. to pray for the lost, that I would spend an evening each week reading the Bible with Muslim refugees because I want them to love Jesus, that I would move to another country, where there are no churches, hardly any other believers, where I would be an outsider and an alien, simply because I want to tell people about Jesus.
I'm not trying to say that I'm this amazing super Christian. I'm fairly lazy and I love my alone time and I hate waking up early. But the more I learn about Jesus, the more I change; the more I love him, the less I love the world; the more I know him, the more I want to follow him. I would follow him anywhere. This morning I was reading in Hebrews about faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Without faith, a lot of the things I do would be pointless. But I believe that this is not my home, that there is a Kingdom that is greater than anything we can see, and that it is to be treasured more than anything this world has to offer.
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." Matthew 13:44
The number of people just LEAVING the park was overwhelming. Michael said it reminded him of blood pumping through an artery. I'm not sure why you'd pay so much for a ticket and not stay for the headliner, who knows. Everytime I find myself in a massive crowd of people, especially downtown, I'm reminded just how obnoxious and annoying people can be. Maybe it's that being in a massive crowd makes people feel invisible or inconsequential which leads them to believe they can act like tremendous morons and it doesn't matter.
Laying on our little blanket watching people stagger and slur, I became aware of how different my life has become. I got a sense of what it means to be in the world but not of the world. The truth is that most people can't relate to my life, that I would move to an apartment complex across town in order to live in a community of people that I hadn't met and who I had little in common with except a passion to tell people the gospel. That I would wake up at 5:30 a.m. to pray for the lost, that I would spend an evening each week reading the Bible with Muslim refugees because I want them to love Jesus, that I would move to another country, where there are no churches, hardly any other believers, where I would be an outsider and an alien, simply because I want to tell people about Jesus.
I'm not trying to say that I'm this amazing super Christian. I'm fairly lazy and I love my alone time and I hate waking up early. But the more I learn about Jesus, the more I change; the more I love him, the less I love the world; the more I know him, the more I want to follow him. I would follow him anywhere. This morning I was reading in Hebrews about faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Without faith, a lot of the things I do would be pointless. But I believe that this is not my home, that there is a Kingdom that is greater than anything we can see, and that it is to be treasured more than anything this world has to offer.
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." Matthew 13:44
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