Today I was pleasantly surprised with a gift of music in a most unusual place.

I had gone for a haircut and pedicure at Hair Perfections as I do like clockwork every 5 weeks, but today was different.  As I was walking from Yvette’s  nail station over to Carols station I saw a young girl walking toward the door with a giant purple hard shell case.  As she opened the door I had to ask, “Is that a cello?”  Tegan quickly answered “yes”.

After a quick trip to the shampoo bowl, I settled into the chair in a plastic cape.  Carol dropped a bag of Fritos in my lap and fired up the clippers as the usual salon chatter continued… it seems  Tegan  was playing a recital that afternoon, and we all asked if she would play.  I never expected she would, but she was all fired up.  She just pulled out the cello, sat down on a chair and began to play.

It was a beautiful gift of music that this charming 15 year old girl shared with us.

Carol just froze with her clippers in the air, a little hair may have even floated into the frito bag, but we didn’t care!  We all turned toward Tegan and listened as this gifted teen closed her eyes and revealed the beauty of her soul with a spine tingling performance right there in the salon.

I wish I had a recording of this!

It was so unexpected, so passionate, and so warm, I just had to share.  Mark my words, this girl is one to watch.  I let her know she would be getting her first blog review.  What I did not say, is that someday when she is a famous musician known all over the world, I will be saying I knew her when, and pointing back to this blog post as my proof.

It just made me feel right with the world!  I had come into the salon feeling the stress of  a family matter I had taken a pretty harsh stand on, and it was as if God Himself had reached out with a gift to soothe my soul.

Thank you Tegan, for a beautiful gift of music!

Blessings & Adventure,

Lynn “lynnibug” Rios

I have learned that the word Christian means different things to different observers.

The reason for this is that many who profess to be Christian do not reflect the true meaning of the word.  If you have followed my blog for any time at all, you know that I am not fond of denominations or any other kind of label we put on a group of people because people are individuals, and will align themselves with the doctrine of a group to different degrees, anywhere from cool,  to tepid,  to red hot fanatical.

The question “What is a Christian?” for me, first requires an exploration of the meaning of the word “Christian” and an assessment of  whether or not the doctrine is aligned with the meaning of the word.

In a sense, I am seeking to define what a Christian should be based on a pure definition.  So let’s look at the root word “Christ” and the suffix “ian”. Christ, according to the bible, is the Son of God who willingly came to join us in the flesh to reveal to us a living and loving God, and to be sacrificed  on our behalf.  The suffix”ian” or “an” indicates that someone or something belongs to a certain group. Thus, an Indian would be a resident of or someone who was born in India, a Faustian philosophy is one promoted by the character Faust, or one that reflects what Faust believed.  A Christian, then,  is a believer in or a follower of Christ, and a Christian philosophy would reflect what Christ believed.  More simply put, to be a Christian is to strive to be like Christ.  To be like Christ, we must first come to know Him.

Stop and think for a moment about the people you know.  We have acquaintances – people we know a little bit about, friends – people we know more about, family – people we have known all or most of our lives, spouses – people we are very intimate with.  The church is filled with the same degrees of relationship with Christ.  To some He is just an acquaintance, to others a friend,  but to succeed as Christians in becoming the bride of Christ as described in scripture, we will need to achieve a wide spread level of intimacy with Christ.

I recently studied a book by Richard Stearns titled “The Hole in Our Gospel“, which explores what Christ called the Church to be and do, and how the Church has fallen far short of that mark.  If we want to call ourselves Christians, the Truth is we need to raise the bar back up to where Christ set it.  If we are to achieve a level of intimacy with Him, it will be done His way, not ours. (more…)