O What A Night

Have you ever heard someone sing something that sounded really, really good, but it just seemed like they couldn’t ‘feel’ what they were singing?

For example, a couple years ago there was a young female pop artist that recorded a version of the hymn ‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow’. Beautiful voice. I just didn’t feel the emotion from her that she believed what she was singing…it sounded pretty, but something was missing.

With it being the Christmas season, it seems we’re inundated with numerous singers trying their hand at the spiritual Christmas songs, but to me, they’re missing something. Not a judgment call, just an observation.

Every Christmas, the local country station gets many, many requests for this song I posted below. It’s the most beautiful rendition of ‘O Holy Night’ I have ever heard. Cool thing is, the guy gets it. He understands what he’s singing about. The emotion is so…raw to me.

Enjoy.

My Trip To Hillbilly Mecca

Back in the 60's, John Lennon got himself into a little trouble for saying that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ.

John Lennon had never been to Flatwoods, Kentucky.

My wife's hometown - Flatwoods, Kentucky - is also the hometown of Billy Ray Cyrus. Yes sir, my wife fondly remembers 1993 when 'Achy Breaky Heart' and BRC was the hottest thing around (until Billy Ray's daughter put on wig).

Several trips ago, April took me to L and J's, another famous landmark in Flatwoods, because that's where Billy Ray liked to hangout before he 'made it'. I kid you not, this place has (or had - it's closed now. Guess BRC didn't care for it too much after all) a Billy Ray booth marked off. And I got to sit in it. How cool am I?

One other cool tid-bit: My mother-in-law used to work in the lawyer's office and helped handle some of Billy Ray's paternity suits.

My Billy Ray obsession is 15 years too late. Guess I'll have to settle for watching 'Hannah Montana'.

Empty

'I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you with my own eyes.
I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes in repentance'

- Job 42:5-6

The whole time I read that passage, I just felt God whispering to me, 'Jim, Job was speaking about me without knowing what he was talking about. You've been doing the same thing.'

That kind of took me back - it's not as if I have been teaching heresies to my students. What God pointed out to me was much worse - I was teaching them about a God I really have not spent much time with in the past few weeks. Things have felt so...robotic. Like I have been running on autopilot. Wednesday night, Sunday School, the small groups...running on pure Jim and really no God, although God is working in spite of me. I want to get back to where I was with God...so, so close. Striving to find him. Hearing from Him often. Knowing which steps to take. I miss that so much. I feel so empty.


'He is the one who can tell us the reason for our existence, our place in the scheme of things, our real identity. It is an identity we can't discover for ourselves, that others can't discover in us - the mystery of who we really are....it is a secret He will tell us slowly and sweetly, when we are willing to spend time with Him; time with Him who is beyond all time.'

- Emilie Griffin