B. B. and Jesus

Tonight I was listening to some good ole blues music. Actually it was the CD of blues music I made when I was in NYC, when I was feeling a little home sick for my Faulknerian south. The music got me thinking about first times. Can you imagine what it felt like to hear B. B. King for the first time? This not something I experienced because I feel like I have heard this music all of my life. For me it seems like this music has been the sound track to my life playing somewhere in the background where I did not notice it but there it was.

For me the gospel is this way. It has been the background melody to my life. For years I could not hear it, but it was there. It was that thing to which I tapped my foot. I lived my live in the shadow of the Gospel, and whether I knew it or not it was influencing my decisions and how I lived my life. Then there was a day when I sat quietly and heard it. Just like when a Southerner really hears the picking on the guit-fiddle for the first time, it changed my life. It changed the way looked at the sky and the way I responded to the wind.

Now imagine with me someone who grew up with out B. B. in the background. Imagine how their mind must have raced when they first heard him, whey they heard Lucille (B. B.’s guitar) wail out in painful ecstasy. That is how it is when someone hears the Gospel, the true Gospel of grace and love, for the first time. Just like B. B. awakens our musical soul, The Gospel will awaken the soul. The Gospel story will leave them waiting more and more. They want more and more of that Thing that will leave them never wanting.

Just a thought.