And Now For Something Completely Different

I live in a suburb of Austin, Texas: a city which prides itself in being different. It's unofficial motto is "Keep Austin Weird". I'd like to share just a few options for entertainment I found in today's Saturday edition of the Austin American Statesman to support this unusual view of life in central Texas:

• The Paramount Theater downtown is hosting this season's final classic film by showing "Lawrence of Arabia" with a Closing Party that will include "live camels under the marquee, original film costumes, belly dancers and drinks." All of this will take place on Congress Avenue just blocks from our state capital.
  
• Forklift Danceworks presents "The Trash Project: An Evening of Dance" performed by the employees and machinery of Austin's solid waste service department. This is held at Austin Studios and will employ 16 garbage trucks and 25 city workers for a "large-scale dance celebration of physical labor." There will be an original score playing - some of which will be performed live by a string trio- that incorporates noises made by trash trucks and machinery.
• Kids Day Out : A Global Art Initiative will have children decorate metal crutches to be sent to children around the world to provide "artistic mobility to handicapped residents of Third World Countries".
• A CD release party for a band that mixes "earthy psych rock, early 70s Motown and Latin funk until you can't tell the difference."
• "Gone to the Dogs": A tribute to dogs in a vaudeville-style variety act.
• "The Head, Hands and Toe Mambo Show": An assortment of mime vignettes set to mambo music.
• The Texas Bamboo Society will be meeting to discuss grooming bamboo; the Community Garden Club will be discussing "Cacti, Succulents and Desert Gardens".
• A list of upcoming sales: City Wide Garage Sale, Blue Genie Art Bazaar, Armadillo Christmas Bazaar and Keep Austin Bizarre Bazaar.
• A request for a source for "a painting of Willie Nelson on velvet, showing his braids and bandanas."

I know even now you are reaching for your phone to list your house for sale so that you, too, may relocate to a place where different is never considered different enough.

This all caught my eye  because I've been thinking a lot about being different lately. I have been meditating on the verse in Galations 2:20 that says "I have been crucified with Christ: it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me."

It is about living differently. About living a life that honors God and is all about what He wants, and not what I want. I've been struck by how hard it would be to walk the present path I am on after the loss of my husband if God's hand was not solidly holding mine. I've considered where my life would be right now if I hadn't decided about 35 years ago to seek God's plan for my life. Think of that: those years spent being led by God, or those same years being led by my earthly desires. I can only imagine the different location I'd be in right now but for God.

And those differences a loving and compassionate God has made in my life? Well, they are certainly more significant than being involved with mambo dancing mimes or choreographed garbage truck performances. 

Keeping the main thing the main thing? That is what will make the difference in this life.