Today has been one of those cold dreary days that have February in the mountains written all over it—the fire wood is damp, it’s hard to get the house above 65 degrees and after a gray day or two it’s now foggy outside and getting dark earlier than usual.

It’s been a weekend where very little gets done and there is not much I am particularly inspired to do. In my mind it is like the flip side to a coin where the other side has clarity and breakthrough pictured boldly in three dimensional glory.

As I said—or at least implied—I had to pull myself out of the rocking chair, where I was covered with a warm blanket in order to attend a solo piano concert by a friend of mine this Sunday afternoon. I was happy under the blanket waiting for the house to get warm, but I am glad that I made the effort.

I knew that my friend (Steve Sensenig) was a good pianist but I was nonetheless surprised at how masterful he was when it came to taking on Beethoven, Chopin and Mendelssohn all by himself in that small recital room on campus. I had positioned myself to be at eye level with his hands and slightly to the left of the keyboard. Except for about twenty people or so in the room mostly behind me, it was just me and Steve and the music for a little under an hour.

It is hard to describe the thoughts and feelings that float by as we allow ourselves to relax and be entertained. Not unlike a good movie, our focus seems to be shaken loose from “everyday” reality and lands somewhere in the realm of possibility. We find ourselves in a place that is not really all that unfamiliar but a place that we know from experience that we must leave at some point. It is a place where hopes and dreams come together in a mix of extreme expectancy only to be followed by the poignant realization that we live our lives far below what we are capable of.

It’s that moment of time when we relax and enjoy the minute by minute beat of a feeling that given the opportunity says we can do and/or be anything that we can think of or imagine. That is until we reach the very moment of breakthrough and the music stops or the movie ends and we find ourselves back in the parking lot looking for our car.

And I have said all that to say this: that even though I have sat through that same movie for many years, I think I am just about to enter into an area of reality that I have only, up until now, been able to sense as a light breeze might be felt coming in off the ocean. It’s a fullness that expresses itself in a joy and an understanding that is as if the movie continues even when we have left the theater or concert hall. That the photo frames that have escaped us all these years are about to be captured in full color and surround sound.

I know this must sound a bit extreme and somewhat truncated. I realize that saying what I have is a lot to get our heads around. How can we go from watching the movie to actually being a part of it? And I don’t exactly have a road map in front of me—it is more of a sense or a feeling that a window of opportunity has opened in front of me and that I must by all means go through it.

My wife and I watched a DVD the other evening that was made at a conference last October in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. It was called “Shatter” and was a Christian arts and worship release event. The very last evening of the conference, after a two hour plus praise and worship service with banners and dancing and people making art, John Paul Jackson got on stage and said that our idea of what worshiping God means has been to narrow. He then went on to explain that whenever we did something within an area of our gifting, we were in reality worshiping God. Scripture says that God gave gifts to men and what better way to exalt the giver of the gift that to operate in it and enjoy it.

Therefore if your gift is encouragement, when you encourage someone you are in a sense glorifying God through that act. And you most certainly don’t have to attend a Sunday “worship” service to feel as though you are indeed worshiping God. Not that that hurts—but you know what I mean.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that when the music stops, you move on to the next song and don’t wait around until something from someplace else just happens to show up in front of you until you begin to sing again.

Enjoy your ride and your song.