Bruce Springsteen, faith and car parking spots
A friend of mine went to see Bruce Springsteen in concert this week. She Loves Bruce. She Adores Bruce. And she was Desperate to go.
So she prayed about it.
Now, my friend hasn't been praying or following Jesus that long. A year or two at the most. And probably, if she had asked me about her prayers to go see Bruce Springsteen I would have been a bit noncommittal and said something like, "Oh, well, that would be fine, of course," when what I really meant would have been, "You want to pray about something Unimportant like a Bruce Springsteen concert? You really think God Cares if you go to see Bruce? I think you should be saving your prayers for more Serious, more Important stuff because God's not that interested in your entertainment life."
It's just as well she didn't ask me about it because I would have steered her wrong.
On Sunday after church she told us about her Bruce experience.
Not only did she get tickets below the normal price, she also managed to drive the two hour trip despite some time constraints, find a car park in what was probably the most overcrowded part of Sydney for parking that night AND she had a spot less than 20 metres from the stage. She didn't just 'see' Bruce Springsteen. She Saw Bruce Springsteen. (She also got a video of him crowd surfing right over her, but frankly, that's just a little too much man-perspiration for me!)
And as well as all that, she had the opportunity to tell her friend, also at the concert, who had told her continually that she wouldn't get a ticket, she wouldn't make the drive and she'd never find a park that she had faith in God, and that God did it all for her.
That's faith.
And I feel pretty stupid.
I'm so busy limiting God's answers to my prayers depending on what I think is 'worthy' of his attention that maybe I'm not giving him the opportunity to do good things and fix stuff I really do need help with. Maybe I need to admit that actually God is interested in the food my children eat, in my current weaning issues with my two year old and in the overseas marketing of my book Love Tears & Autism. Maybe I need to talk to him about the things that I've been thinking I should do on my own.
So thanks, my friend, for your lessons to me about faith and about telling other people what God does for you. I'll see Bruce Springsteen in a whole new light now.