#022 - Origins - pt. 4

MAY 2019

The breakfast club.

I don’t wanna sound like a mama’s boy, but my mom is awesome. She loves to cook, is super generous, and always loves it when I have friends. She was immensely popular in high school, and so was my dad. They both couldn’t understand at the time why it was so hard for me to find friends. I wish I could blame it on moving around a lot or a horrible home life, but we are and have always been a small, close-knit family unit. This is why I think it was hard to introduce my friends to my somewhat eccentric and old-fashioned parents, whom I still lovingly call the rents.

My mom loved the chamber ensemble because even though I was an outsider, it forced me to become friends just by the amount of time I spent with these guys and gals. My mom and Dayna’s mom became the de facto team moms of our friend group which helped. They would endlessly compete with who could provide the most transportation and food for the group and helped Peeps deal with a bunch of angsty teenagers with senioritis. Food is the easiest way to win people over and make friends.

Dayna’s mom would cook breakfast, and I would tell my mom, who would send me to school with a bunch of homemade breakfast sandwiches the next day. I’m still best friends with Dayna’s first boyfriend, Lee, because of it. Church gave me my other roommate, Chris, but roommate stories are for another time. God gave me two older brothers to look out for me and my real brother. All of this because I said yes when Peeps asked me to join Chamber. My real brother from my dad’s previous marriage.

The senior demeanor.

My senior year continued, and I soon found myself with new influence opportunities. Even though they didn’t talk to me, all the popular kids knew who I was, which was a win. I was also slowly finding a way to fit in with my chamber group. My mom having a Toyota Sequoia didn’t hurt either. Its massive size and gas economy made long trips more enjoyable before the days of iPhones. 

All tangents aside, I reunited with this group for Peep’s last concert on the night I started this writing. It was great catching up with old friends and really seeing that none of us have changed a bit. We’re all still the individuals we were in high school, which isn’t bad. Sure, we’re older, and most of us have grown-up jobs, but we’re still the same people. The dynamic is still the same, which is the craziest part about God placing good people in your life. If it weren’t for the environment, I would have never succeeded in my senior year. 

While we were catching up, one of my closest friends in the group and I were chatting about how we used to walk to class together. She was a new Korean student who didn’t speak English very well and was dreadfully shy because of it. Peeps saw in her this beautiful spirit, and this student also had a great soprano voice. Turns out she was a devout Christian, too. She, however, had trouble telling us this sometimes because of the language barrier. 

Horse blinders.

I was so caught up in my fitting-in problems that I failed to see that God had placed in my life someone who could be going through the exact same thing I was. I was so laser-focused on my own problems, as my mind tends to do. It was like wearing horse blinders.

I realized this when we were catching up. I honestly didn’t know that she didn’t speak English well because the English she did know were so very well-spoken. I would talk her ear off between classes, and she would politely listen, possibly not knowing what I was saying half the time. Even in 2006 teenagers spoke in Orwellian dialects that can be incomprehensible to even the most adept. 

She was the only one who would want to walk with me because everyone else was great friends. So she and I became de facto besties. We both realized how thankful we were recently after she’d had a margarita and me a beer. God is the ultimate people placer, so it’s best to leave the people placing up to him. It is up to you to shine a light in all circumstances, which Peeps does extraordinarily well. This is where I want to land this writing.

God has been working in my life for most of my life because I’ve been a Christian. I know that sentence may be exhausting, but it is the best way to describe this influence that God places on not only his followers but anyone with whom his followers interact—another exhausting statement. Light is the best way for me to describe this, so if you’ll allow me to elaborate. 

This little light of mine.

When I was a child, I had an unusual request for Christmas. There was a store down the street from me that was the coolest for a nerd like me. It was a place of electronics, radios, and fun lighting products called Radio Shack. And the only thing I wanted for Christmas that year was a strobe light I had seen on display in the store window. My mom happily obliged.

I would turn off all the lights in my room, make sure it was completely pitch black, and turn on the strobe light full blast. Then, I would just sit there and behold the majesty of the strobe. Me and my friends would have stop-motion dance parties, and I would add to the chaos with any flashlights or lamps I could find. As a lighting designer, strobe lighting or flashing the light really fast in a staccato fashion is the apex of energy creation when doing lights to music. I’m a strobe connoisseur, too, which is funny. 

Light is a powerful medium and so crucial and critical to our survival as humans, that there is a profession for people to create and change environments with such an energetic medium. I belong to this profession.

Origin of light.

I wrote about the Promethean nature of light in "New Apologetics," so if you want more detail about the devotional I was asked to do, click here. The short of it was I was asked to do a devotional on what light means to me and how I worship through lighting. In retrospect, it is easy for me to use the notes from that devotional to illustrate further how we, as Christians, should shine and be lights for Christ. 

Peeps and others are natural lighthouses and become safe harbors for fellow light bearers. It is because light is visceral and innate in all of us, for we all belong and are connected to and by the one true source of light, our heavenly father. It is because of this connection that worship lighting and doing lighting become something of a connection point or glue of any experience or musical performance. 

In the beginning, there was darkness until God spoke light into the world. God’s spirit is said to be hovering over the waters. Then he splits the night from the day and gives us the moon and the sun. So even at night, we are reminded of the light and the day ahead. The moon reflects the sun like we reflect the light of the Father; this reflection is on display when we shine the brightest. We are to reflect the Father's light as the moon reflects the sun's light. But we also are to shine with the light inside us - this is the Holy Spirit.

Even when the Israelites wandered in the desert, God gave them a beacon of light to follow. God always shines in the darkness, and the darkness was vanquished first in creation. Light is also the antithesis of evil, so reflecting light deflects evil. Light connects us all, and as humans, we are naturally attracted to environments that have warm and safe lighting and repelled from those that do not.

Peeps and Eileen from part one are natural reflections of God’s light and examples of God placing strong influencers and strong lights in my life to encourage me always to shine brightly. Even in the darkest of circumstances, God’s light will shine through if you stay true to your own light, your own reflection of God’s light. The light that is in all of us has the power to vanquish the darkness. 

Setting yourself up for success is key, so I hope you ask God to help you be a bright light. Jesus himself was the light of the world, and we, as Christians as Christ's followers, have this natural ability to shine in any circumstance. We must accept and harness this power to enrich and empower those around us and be examples in this dark world. I want to leave you with my power verse from John; may it always remind you of this. 

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:4-5

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow.