I write this with a heavy heart.  My wife’s sister’s husband passed away suddenly last Friday morning.  Cardiac arrest was the cause of death, and as he was driving at the time it was a miracle that Tina escaped unharmed.

Death makes you measure your life.  Death brings all things into focus.  Death has a way of revealing what is truly worth my time.  A few days ago before all this happened I felt really impressed in my heart that I have been spending too much time running after ‘my kingdom’ rather than running after the ‘kingdom of God’.  In essence I have been focused so much on my career and self-promotion, and not enough about why I am making music in the first place.

It’s one thing to really care about what you do, and want to succeed in it.  It’s great to see your dreams come true and know that it was in large part because you risked and worked hard, but in the middle of that we sometimes lose sight of why we started in the first place.  Sometimes money  and worries of finances becomes my focus and I can’t see the big picture for the sake of my need to earn enough for my next cd or project.

Sometimes I just want to ‘make’ it because then my dream would be ‘fulfilled’.  But that dream would be simply based around the need to look good for other people and my desire to say ‘I did this my way’

I don’t know what it looks like for an independent musician to pursue the things of God over and above his own self-promotion and desire to succeed in the music ‘ business’ but one thing I can tell you is that my dream must not be just about me ‘making’ it, it can’t be about me ‘doing it’  because all that in the face of death lies in ruin.  However, if my music makes a difference in one person’s life, if it answers one question, if it gives someone an expression in their grief, joy, and pain then I will have accomplished what I was put on earth to do.  That’s success that will last for eternity.

May you and I live lives that matter.