Amazing Grace

I saw a great concert last night at Tennessee Temple University featuring Sarah Groves, Bebo Norman and Fernando Ortega. All three of them make beautiful music and it was a nice fit to put them all together in concert. None of them are really rock acts but more laid back and acoustic. So the concert was pretty much like that. It was one of the more reserved concerts I’ve been to and that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s kind of ironic that the crowd sat through every song until the very last one, Amazing Grace, and that was really one of the slower songs of the evenings. 🙂

The concert was in a large auditorium and for me, at least, I prefer more of a smaller venue if you’re going to have that type of music. A coffee house would have been perfect, but you couldn’t have fit that crowd in there. The musical highlight of the evening: Sarah singing “Jesus, You’re Beautiful” with Bebo on guitar.

As we walked in, a friend and I ran across a street preacher shouting loudly about the worldliness that has invaded the Baptist college. He ranted against the new dress code that allows women to wear pants instead of dresses and all other sorts of things. I thought about getting his card for a revival. Haven’t heard that type of preaching in a LONG time . . .thank God. I asked a student as we walked in, “Do you have to put up with that alot?” and she shrugged and said, “yes.” What a shame.

If you grew up Christian, you’ve associated with some of these types and they kind of lose their bite sometimes. Sure, you hear a bark every once in a while but you know their humanity and sometimes they come from a place of good intentions. But, for a non-Christian, when their experience with Christianity is this hateful, “righteous indignation,” imagine how awful that must be. “If this person represents the Jesus you speak about, then I don’t want to know about Him.” Lord, don’t let me be guilty of that.

So, while the concert was going on, I thought once of twice to the preacher outside who certainly has been disturbed to the point of putting signs together and shouting at students from behind the watchful eye of a security guard. God, help the students he’s shouting at, God help his family and God help him. May all of us be overwhelmed with Your amazing grace:

I once was lost, but now I’m found/ Was blind but now I see