The very face of God

Todd and I spent a fun evening tonight out for his birthday, although we did all stuff I wanted to do. How great is that? :) I told him on the way home that it was the perfect evening--

1. We bought shoes for him that I like (and that is a long story in itself).
2. We ate some of my favorite food ever. A Bleu Cheese Bacon Burger style Cheeseburger Taco at Tin Star, with their yummy fries and chips with tasty corn salsa before the burger/taco came...I told Todd that if I ever had any reason to order a "last meal" that's what I wanted him to bring me.
3. We went to a concert featuring one of my favorite musicians, Bebo Norman, and he was great, as always, and also were introduced to two other rather good musicians--First, Jonah Werner, who shall heretofore be known as Jason Wilcox or David Mraz, because he is very obviously influenced by those two other musicians who are also some of my favorites. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, Jason Mraz and David Wilcox should feel pretty honored. ;) Second was Christopher Williams. I brought home some really good tips for Ryan to use from him. The guy plays a djembe hanging from him body on a harness-type deal and sings without any other accompaniment for many of his songs, and that was pretty incredible! He also plays a mean guitar (somewhat a la Monte Montgomery, another musician we like).

Here is the thing that most stood out for me tonight, however. Early in the evening, Bebo performed his first song, Walk Down this Mountain. I have heard and sung along with that song more times than I can remember, but you know, sometimes part of a song will just jump out at you that you never really paid much attention to before. As he was singing, I heard these words:

But just look around and you'll find
The very face of God
He's walking down into the distance
He's walking down to where the masses are

I was thinking of the times Ryan told us about--this summer on mission trip, when he and the youth worked with the feisty little homeless girl, and on his trip to Denver the summer before, where he sang with the homeless man in the park. The homeless man told Ryan he was his cousin and would see him again. When he looked into the eyes of the homeless girl, he realized he was seeing those eyes again--the eyes of Jesus.

Well, tonight the concert was a benefit for Bethesda Young Life, which is a group that ministers to disabled high school students, mostly mentally retarded. They share the love of God with the kids through regular meetings and taking them to camp in Colorado in the summer, where they pair them up with "normal" teens for the week. They showed a video that was awesome--these teenagers laughing and playing and having an incredible time. It was wonderful to really laugh at the scenes of the kids dancing and singing crazy. Usually it's the wrong thing to do to laugh at these kinds of kids, but it was entirely appropriate here, it was so normal.

So, they had a group of about 20 teens from the ministry at the concert, and they got up and sang a combination of Jesus Loves me/Amazing Grace. Their leader encouraged the rest of the audience to sing along if we knew the words. I was singing at first, but then began to get pretty choked up. I watched the boy in the middle. He was spontaneously "directing" and doing a very fine job, if I do say so myself. I saw the girl whose face lit up and looked so beautiful as she sang every word. I smiled at the kids who simply stood there staring back at us with the "deer in the headlights" looks. I saw and heard the soloists here and there--the kids who sang at the top of their lungs joyfully, if out of tune.

The concert was great, but that was better. I know for sure that what I saw tonight was the very face of God.

Matthew 25:40--Then the King will say, "I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me--you did it to me." (The Message)