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Decade

    by Brian MacGeorge

    (written June 2002)

 

    My wife and I are having a baby this fall. To make room for the nursery, I'm clearing out my office. It's a good thing I still have another four months 'cuz that's how long it's going to take me to go through everything. This fall I will have been working in the Christian music video ministry for 10 years. It's a weird feeling. An entire decade of my life has now been poured into this and I am still no closer to the answer to "why me?" as I was all those years ago when God first called a scrawny 17 year old kid to put together a ministry like this. I am not qualified for what I do. I don't understand why he called me. I certainly wouldn't have been my first choice... or second or third or one hundred and twenty fifth for that matter. But God doesn't judge on the same standards that I do. He laughs at my criteria for filling my position. My interview was simply one question... Will you go where I send you? I said yes and the job was mine.

    Going through the stuff in my office has brought back a flood of memories. A decade of files, papers, notes and video tape can be a little overwhelming to sort but nowhere near as overwhelming as the memories they bring back. I have found old flyers that were designed to advertise the show. Newsletters with long forgotten articles that I barely remember writing. Scraps of paper with notes and phone numbers, probably long out of service, scribbled on them. Personnel files of people whose faces to me are like from a half-remembered dream. Stacks of three different versions of unused letterhead. A ten year paper trail, but of what?

    What is it really that we have here? What is it that I have poured a decade of my life into? Even as I do it, I don't fully understand it. It's weird. I can explain it to others but it is still unclear to me. I want to make a difference. I want to be used by God as a light to others. People tell me that I am but I have a hard time seeing it myself. Maybe that's a good thing. I'd rather be a light and not know it than to see myself as a light and be blind. Even now as I think about this, i wonder if this is real humility or just a poor self-image. I really don't know. Maybe a little of both. At least I hope that it's at least a little bit of genuine humility. Still, genuine humility is hard to identify when it's the real thing.

    Paul commented that we should do some sort of ten year anniversary special. i don't know. So many of those kind of things come across as "Look at me! Look what I've done!". It's not about me. Never has been, never will be. To be honest, I never wanted to be in the spotlight to begin with. I don't like that feeling. I can't see myself as a worthy example to be set for others. I am just a man, not a very good one at that. I fall short of the mark more often than not. Even when I hit the mark, it's still usually in spite of myself. God said that before he formed me He knew me. And still he called me anyway. A thought to boggle the mind.

    Still, all things considered, maybe that's the whole point in the first place. Like I said, it's not about me, it's about Him. He chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. To Him, I was the perfect candidate because to the world I was the worst. I had opened my heart and was willing to go. The rest has always been up to Him. Ten years He has lead me. It has been an interesting journey, and still it has only just begun.