I took the afternoon off today so that we could go up to the opening night of Lifest. Lifest is a Christian Music Festival that is celebrating it's 10th year this year. This is our 5th year going. Last year we camped for all 5 days but this year we are only going one day due to other family activities. Even going for one day is still worth it. The lineup tonight was pretty good. The music for the night started out with the Robbie Seay Band. I had only heard of some of their music previously but they were good live. As is with many of the artists here, some of the best times of their shows is when they break out from their music and get everyone singing some common Worship music with them. I always love that part of being at lifest. Especially later in the evening when the mainstage is packed and you get 10,000+ people singing together. The second artist tonight was Natalie Grant and she was good also. Once she started playing, I recognized quite a bit of her music. After Natalie was done they took a short break and then they had a couple of people speak about the teenager that died at lifest last year. Her Pastor and Youth Pastor talked about her and how it was hard to bring the youth group back again this year but that she would have wanted it that way. We never know when/where things will happen so we have to live life to it's fullest. One of the things the Pastor said rang very true for me as well. He said that he had done many funerals over the years, and that the funerals that were the hardest was the ones where there was not a lot of Jesus. I understood immediately what he meant. I sing at Funerals sometime and I do find that it is very hard when it is very apparent that the funeral is something that the Family is going through because they feel that it is something that has to be done. A funeral is supposed to be a Celebration of a person's life and a chance to say goodbye and acknowledge that they have won. As a Christian, dying merely fulfills our final hope that we are taken home to be with our Savior, Jesus Christ. We grieve because we are still here and we do not have that person in our life anymore, but we will be with them again when we finally go home as well. The final artist of the night was the Newsboys and we have seen them many times but never get tired of their energy and message. I am a little bummed that we could not camp this year but everything happens for a reason so I can live with it.
