Chronically, Terminally

Last night I was talking to my brother about love. I thanked him for the love he's shown me. He told me to start a blog about music.

The one way that he has shown his love to me that speaks to me the loudest happened on one occasion when I was spending the week at his apartment, sleeping on his couch. (I swear this all intimately does have to do with music; I swear.) It was upon my return after two family-and-friends-isolated years of self-sacrifice and strenuous labor, which I had devoted to God. The very hardest part of this period of sanctification was pulling the I.V. from my arm which fed my chronic addiction. I’m sure the pains I felt being ripped from my drug are similar to the pains of anyone being stripped of anything that consumes them. Just for the record, the time moved fast, and my cravings seemed to be forgotten in seeing others come to Christ. I’m beyond glad I did it… the one time.

So… Right. Back to the story with my brother...

Sitting at his apartment, talking together, he realized he had something I needed more than he did. He told me to wait in the hall as he went to go get something from his room. He returned with a cute little 4 gig glossy teal ipod nano. He inherited it from our mother who got a new iphone for Christmas, and thus had no need for the child’s plaything. He handed it to me and made excuses how he didn’t really even need it because bla bla bull crap. Honestly it meant more to me than almost any other thing that has happened to me in my life.

Though I have to frequently rotate what music is on there (remember it’s a 4 gig), I have, in a big way because of what my brother did for me, constant access to the drugs I need calm my jitters, soothe my soul, and feed my unquenchable thirst for sounds, rhythms, melodies, poetry, bits of souls, human life, love, events, stories, emotion, problems, triumphs…

One time while I was out doing the previously mentioned serving God as a full-time minister thing, I spoke with a rather eccentric Christian who told me that the entire purpose God created us is for us to sing praises to him eternally. I immediately brushed it off as a shallow perspective of God and our purpose, but how far away from the truth is that idea really?