rock n roll

This week I found out that someone I used to know has died.

We weren't best friends, or anything like that. In fact, I would call him an acquaintance. But I did know him when I used to live across the country, and now he's dead.

And in a weird twist, he actually died 7 months ago, but a (real) friend of mine sent me that article this past week and I didn't look at the date, so I THOUGHT he had just passed away recently. This has all been very surreal.

When I found out about his death, I looked up the article in the local paper where I used to live, and then several articles popped up on local blogs about his death and how he will be missed. I read the obituary his family put in the paper and it was very touching. And sad because he has 2 kids that he left behind.

In one of the blog articles, it said "he lived the rock and roll lifestyle". I would say that was true, especially considering that I met him and knew him through a tattoo shop. He was the owner, and a fairly well-known person about a fairly small town. And he did live that kind of a life. He was heavily tattooed, and was out on the town often. So I guess it's not unbelievable that he had been out drinking with a friend, and rolled his car into a concrete embankment and was killed. But that comment about the "rock and roll lifestyle" really struck me.

And it made me sad.

There is a profound sadness in the fact that he searched for fulfillment in living that kind of life. In living hard and dying young. In rolling your car at 3am after being out drinking. And I know that people have to make their own choices.

But it makes me so sad that he never found the real source of fulfillment. It makes me sad to think that he was constantly chasing things to fill his life, and never had the opportunity to know the only One who can provide real and lasting fulfillment.

Being a musician, and person who is very connected to music, it makes me think about the "rock and roll lifestyle", and how very sad and empty that is.

It makes me pray. Pray that I have the courage to tell my friends that are searching that they really can find peace in the One who came to bring peace.

And it impresses on me that the "rock and roll lifestyle" is a life of futility, because there is no way to find Peace unless you find Redemption out of that lifestyle in the end. And it makes me sad that Mitchell never found that.
K