4Advent Sunday: A Very Good Day

This was a great day! Caleb and I attended Good Shepherd at the 11 am service--Here is Kevin preaching...and a three point sermon to boot. Besides Kevin's wonderful preaching (of course) a highlight of the service was Jeff Derdich's rendition of Little Drummer Boy and a fifth grader who was the drummer today.

This afternoon I went to the Mark Hayes-Bryan Taylor concert at Liberty UMC. This has to rank right up there as the highlight of my Advent. Mark is such a marvelous pianist...Liberty has a concert grand and it sounded fabulous. Bryan's sweet baritone was made even sweeter by Mark's superb accompaniment (I am sounding like a music critic). I took my 2 Christmas arrangement books; looked at the arrangement as Mark played and had him autograph them as well. It was fun. Here is a not-so-great picture of Bryan singing and Mark playing. Mark's playing literally took me to a place that is hard to describe. I am listening to so much solo piano by way of Itunes that I had forgotten what a difference it is to hear a fine pianist in person...there's just something about that incarnation thing....

And then home to do preparations for our family brunch tomorrow as we open presents as we have for many years, on Christmas Eve morning. And then turn on the Gospel Music Channel and heard Take Six sing Joy to the World. And to see the cats like this sound asleep. That's Mel's leg thrown up over Danger---something about this picture makes me think of the death scene from Romeo and Juliet...which isn't musical unless like me you can remember the 1968 Romeo and Juliet movie's soundtrack.

Anyway I am grateful to God for all the music of my life and for, quite frankly, life in general. Happy day before the day before Christmas!