||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS by EDIE KULPER |||
Last night I took our older son and his friend to a concert in Everett by For King and Country, a Christian band led by two Australian brothers named Joel and Luke Smallbone. Luke explained during the concert that their father was a music promoter, and their parents and four siblings moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when their mother was pregnant with her seventh child. When they arrived, their dad lost his job and the family lost everything – everything they owned, their security, and the assurance of eating at each mealtime.
One day, an acquaintance asked if he could walk through their empty house to take a look inside. They agreed. The next day, two moving trucks full of furniture pulled up and men unloaded all kinds of furnishings into their home. People made them food over and over again. One man handed the keys of his brand new car to them, telling them to take it.
The outpouring of generosity by others changed their lives. I know that they change lives, too, and at the least, their songs and lyrics remind people that they aren’t alone, they aren’t forsaken, that even past hardships and bad choices need no longer define them. I had never been to a Christian concert before, and what I love is the fact that they sing about things like joy, like children, and about loving their parents. How refreshing!
Appropriately, our son needed to turn in three songs to his guitar teacher at school, and he happened to choose For King and Country’s “God Only Knows” as his final song. He spent about ten hours laying down a multitude of tracks, getting them aligned to recreate the song on his own, so we had some great audio preparation for several days before the concert.
The Angel of the Winds Arena was sold out, and I thought you might like a peek at the show. Perhaps you haven’t been to a Christian concert either, so how appropriate it is that I can share this to you on a Sunday. These short videos do not do it justice whatsoever, as the brothers sang powerfully, the bass and drums reverberated heavily through our chests and organs, and the crowd built to the point that its roar between songs near the end was near deafening.
The band paused between songs to speak encouraging words to everyone, tell inspirational stories, and talk about Compassion International, an organization that helps anyone sponsor a child or multiple children around the world who don’t have future prospects or even present basics like enough food or education. After handing out packets to everyone in the audience who was interested, they got back to playing.
Considering that I haven’t been to a concert in a few decades and haven’t been to any events in the last few years, and that my son and his friend had never been to a big concert, this was a phenomenal first in many respects. Risky? I’m not sure. But worth every minute of it for my mental health.
I hope that you, too, have finally been able to enjoy some long-awaited activities that are filling your aching need for normalcy, whether you’ve walked through the farmers’ market and enjoyed spontaneous conversations in the stunning sunlight, attended the punk-band concert at The Grange, or simply expanded your mainland horizons beyond shopping at Costco for groceries. May the springs in your brain that twanged loose during the pandemic be reforming one large, reformed coil at a time with every outing and human you reincorporate back into your life.
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Hi Edee…
I started to read your article because I really like For King and Country. I stayed because I like Orcus Island and I was also interested in what you had to say about happiness. Three years ago I lost my precious wife of 32 years to her third cancer. Six months later I also lost my little sister to cancer, so my pursuit of happiness has also been a journey. I am also a Christian so I was looking forward to your opinion about achieving happiness. You seem to have been, and/or are currently going through some difficult things in your life and maybe you have some hurts and pain and are searching for a way to find happiness. In your search please also research the life of Jesus in the bible, not as people have told you about it but why he came and how he lived. Christianity is not about religion and what people say it is or isn’t, or about speaking the right words, volunteering at church or a bunch of rules. It’s about Jesus Christ. Many people and many churches miss this. Churches do not wish to offend people so they don’t often talk about hell. They may talk about heaven because it’s a happy place but talking about hell makes people uncomfortable so they avoid it. The reality is that there are only two places we go when we die, heaven or hell. We spend so much time in this life on figuring things out but seldom spend time on where we will spend eternity after we pass. We are all sinners and as such we would be unable to be in the presence of God in heaven unless had sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins. It’s only because God loves us so much that he sent his son, Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins. It isn’t about what we do, like going to church or reading our bible or being a good person, it’s because of God’s love for us and his grace that we can live eternally in heaven with him. It isn’t something we can earn, it is a free gift from God because he loves us and you so much. I’m sure you are very familiar with John 3:16 but I will state it in case some of your readers are not. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Edee I toldly agree with what you said about being being selective with who we spend time with. I like the saying, “you show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” As you said, we should spend our time with people (including family) who are positive, supportive, kind, loving and encouraging, basically like Jesus.
So in your pursuit of happiness, please also spend time researching the life of Jesus because he is the key to spending eternity in heaven and that is where we will ultimately find true, lasting happiness.
God bless you…