tambourine

I went to a concert a few weeks back and one of the bands playing consisted of; drums, bass, electric guitars, electric piano, synth, vocals, and a tambourine.

It was a full band, and the instruments were amplified creating a lot of noise.. good noise, but a loud amount of it. is loud an amount? today it is.

There was one instrument that was not amplified however... unfortunately, the title of this blog kind of destroys any hope for suspense that would have surely otherwise overwhelmed you, as you desperately sought to discover what this one un-amped instrument might have been.

it was the electric guitar, the band sucked.

ok, it was really the tambourine...and there is a reason for this. The frequency of the tambourine is at a completely different level than the other instruments and can pierce through the swelling sea of sonic waves in an astounding way. The tambourine needed no amplification. The tambourine needs no amplification because that is how it has been designed... also the tambourine player was absolutely sick! ( in an amazing way) It was like a freaking humming bird was somehow harmonioulsy combined with the tin man and mentored by a muppet named Animal... and I don't say that about many people.

I think we can learn something from this... (as long as you discount the metallic muppet bird part)

I think there is something inside of all of us that is looking for amplification. we all have our own story, thoughts, song, poetry, pain, concerns, passions.. etc.

There is a desire for these things to be amplified and expressed.. for them to be physically manifested and, best case scenario, understood.

Cliche? yeah.. but let's keep going because there is some truth here... most things that are now "cliche" were once original and insightful

Ok... so this is where things get all mystical and deep... what if instead of us trying to simply amplify ourselves were formed into people who by our very nature are amplified... set apart... what if the way we looked, acted, sounded, and lived was at a different wave length than all the rest of the world?

What if we were transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we were able to walk out a holy and God-pleasing life an reality and not just theory... what if we were so drastically radical and made a different frequency than the standard so that people had to call us something else... isn't that what happened to the first "christians"? They manifested the teachings of Christ and deviated from the staus quo to the degree that they no longer looked like everything else... they looked like small Christs.

The word "christian" had a beautiful season and was extremely accurate for that time ,but has been watered down, whored out, and falsely self-embraced... I think we need a new generation of serious Christ followers, maybe we can call them something different like...."Christ Followers" ... or we could call them "tambourines" but that would be more confusing.

more important than a new name is a revisitation of the original call and cost of discipleship and dedication to Christ being lived out, someone else can pick the name. They'd have to.

- Jreux