Rock Star
by Zeke Flores
When I was a late teenager I had dreams of becoming a rough and rowdy rock star. I’d hit it big then flame out like the shooting star in Bad Company’s song “Shooting Star.” I hated the thought of waking up in mid-life wondering what I did with my life. Better to peak young, then ride off into the sunset. Or so I thought. Then, life happened and my “dream” became more distant and impossible. (Maybe that’s why I over-compensate by listening to harder and harder rock & roll?) I married young, had three wonderful daughters, and needed to provide for my family. I felt lucky to work for a company where I thought I’d spend my career (a rather unexciting, but steady one) and retire to spend my golden years with my bride. Then, we became Christians and I got the opportunity to quit my steady job and take up the life of a gospel preacher. No way was I ever going to be a rock star now!
Funny thing though; as I whiz past 60 years of age I experience a different kind of mid-life crisis. I don’t regret missing the opportunity to be an immature rockster (that was a pipe dream anyway); instead, I look at my life and wish I’d spent more time in more intensive study of God’s word, in deepening my knowledge and practical understanding of it, in developing an emotional and spiritual maturity more substantial than the one I have now. I wonder about what kind of man I have become and what kind I’ll eventually be.
Well, the past is past but today’s here, and as cheesy as it sounds, it’s the first day of the rest of my life. So, if I want to shake these mid-life blues, I only have to get busy and waste not a moment of the precious time I’ve got left. That’s the wonderful thing about being a Christian, you get a fresh opportunity every day to become more than you were yesterday.
Who knows, I may be a rock star yet, just not the kind the world thinks of!
“You did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:20-24).
