THUMBPRINTS

The Rest...

     Saturday night and Sunday morning found me at Central Christian Church in Wichita, KS.  I sang for 3 of their services.  It’s an amazing facility with exceptional people, and I was honored to have been a part of what I discovered to be an impressively relevant outreach for that area.   The event coordinator, Cheryl Hurley, had actually promoted several 4Him concerts over the years, and had this glossy-lined office that blew my mind.  It was basically a CCM “hall of fame” from over 2 decades of artists coming through her venues.  All of us were up there.  What killed me were the clothes and the mullets; and if the images didn’t belie the age-factor enough, the physical pictures themselves were painfully revealing with how yellow they’d already turned.  It’s crazy…
     By 2:30 I was in the rental making my way back south to Tulsa for the night.  It was great to have that 3-hour lull behind the wheel.  I had it driving up on Sat., but it wasn’t the same because I had issues like the song sets on my mind and wondering how it was all going to pan out.  Yesterday, all I needed to be concerned about was the road and life ahead of me.
     To help maximize my time of re-focus and reflective actualization with God, I insured the presence of a reliable GPS device.  Highly recommended.  It’s so cool to drive in strange territory without that nagging fear of going in the wrong direction, or missing a crucial exit lane.  Assurance is a blessed thing.  But, piercing through what could’ve been a flawless day on the road, was this bizarre sound that always crept up whenever I reached 70 mph.  Imagine someone sitting on your dashboard with a fairly large balloon.  Now, imagine that person untying the balloon and stretching the blowhole in your face, emitting that massively obnoxious squeal at around 130 db.  I tried turning off the stereo, turning off the air, even slapping the snot out of the dashboard.  Nothing seemed to affect it.  What a groove-buster.  So, I guess if you’re going to include a trusty GPS unit with a rental van from Tulsa, it would probably be advisable to throw some ear plugs in as well.

The 4th

  I’m now in the Tulsa, OK. Airport.  It’s been a solid wall of hat wearing & punch-rolling for the past 3 days, and only until now do I feel as if I’m able to sit idly long enough to exhale and reflect on what all went down.  Not unlike the river settlers of old, I just found an empty chair next to a wall outlet for my laptop, so I’m set.
     The July 4th date, Blue Star Moms, required me to be crouched and ready all day, which is par for any festival-like environment; which isn't a negative when I have local buddies like ex-Himmer, Andy Chrisman, showing up.  The people who created this event worked stupid hard with publicity and logistics since February to insure a saturated sense of community awareness for the basic details of the “when’s & where’s”.  They are to be applauded and modeled for their amazing effort in putting this benefit on.  However, at the end of the day, no matter how much blood and sweat they poured into the preparations, the tears were inevitable.  You just can’t control audience attendance, no matter how thorough and detailed your work ethic is.  I’ve seen a lot of well-meaning, God-hearing promoters dot every “i”, only to get a devastating no-show for their reward.  It’s not that they “missed God” in their endeavors, that’s the sad misconception.  The rub exists in the simple fact that God’s will is perfect, but people are not.  You can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. 
     The program itself was fantastic.  Stage lighting and sound was top shelf, what you would see at any of the top 15 festivals this summer.  The grounds were equally rivaling some of the biggest “Grand Stand” areas of these same festivals.  The killer feature of the location was how it sat on the top of a hill that seemed to be at the very heart of the greater Tulsa area; so, when the sun finally fell, we literally had this breathtaking, panoramic vista of every firework in the city, not to mention Blue Star’s own display.  The content went beyond the expected military theme and revealed some good solid ministry, a two-thumbs up for the families that did attend.  It was an honor to have been a part of their endeavors; and, as far as the Blue Star moms for which this event was attributed, I take every one of my hats off to you.