SMOOTHNESS FOR ALL ITS WORTH

The danger in too smooth a jazz is you end up crashing in the rails, asleep. It comes too smooth, devoid of bumps and grit, it smooth-soothes one into a calmness akin to water dripping on time lapse mode. Don't get me wrong - I do love a lot of it - the ones which have 90% jazz and 10% smooth.

Smooth rock  or lite rock, if you may, falls in between having angst of a love found/lost theme climaxing in a guitar solo and raspy tenor singing "Ba-ye-beee" numerous times. Is it lite? Yes. Rock? Arguably.

Sometimes, we carry the inaccurate pursuit of comfort too far and see Christianity only as one smooth, grace-filled ride. Though it is biblical at a surface, it seems to lack the teeth and spikes great men of God, martyrs and disciples are made of.

While some were been burned alive for the sake of the gospel, we hide the gospel in socially relevant topics so as to satisfy our cravings for emotionalism, so we do not offend others, and worse, diminish attendance.

While Paul takes every opportunity and limitation to preach to the point of wearing people to death ( a boy fell from a window after his 2-day preaching), we are too tired to care for needs beyond the third degree of our acquaintance.  To be brutally frank, we only care for burdens and get hyped up when people within our knowledge are affected. Body of Christ? Bahala kayo. I have demons to struggle with,  you know. Philippines? It has always been corrupt governance, anyway, all the way. Though, It was nice to live on this rich soil for awhile. So, like, Ta-taaaa.

While Christ admonishes praying and watching the times and signs, we fill our minds with the number of likes our "copy-pasted-pseudo-spiritual" messages garner, the latest so-called "Pinoy Prides" (forgive my abhorrence of that phrase) - as if our national sovereignty depended on their competitions - and all the profit-driven clutter.

How can we forget how Christ emphasized His pursuit of the will of the Father and not His own, while on this earth?  As Christ is the heart of what we blindly claim as Christianity, it is not a question of which direction to follow. It is a question of "Will We?".

Forgive me, but I don't see a simple, "You-and-me-Lord- let's- walk-together-and-enjoy-the-view-tourist-mode-until -you-come- back" pace.

Where is the urgency? Where is the part where we are redeemed so we can shed the same light of redemption to others? Where is the Great Commission?

Sometimes imperfections are better left were they are. They hurt us, they trample us, they even come close to crushing us. The scars remind us that until that great hope, this earth and everything it embodies -  the government, the honor, the prestige, the residencies  -   is not our home after all. 

And while we're at it, here's an original smooth jazz track (its a mouse over link) - An Alien's Sojourn - from the vaults.