First….this is the BIG week we have been waiting for in the group for months. This Saturday is our very first Homecoming! We’ve been talking about it for years and finally put it all together for 2009. This Saturday night August the 8th we will be hosting the event at McFerrin Missionary Baptist Church in Madison, TN (address is 431 W. Old Hickory Blvd., Madison, TN 37115). We will start at 7:00pm and go until whenever. We plan to have two sets….the first will have more structure and will go through songs from the very beginning to a brand new song we will debut that night. That set will include Eddie Crook as the piano player and Eddie will be bringing some friends from the “industry” with him to accompany us….probably a bass and guitar player. After that first set we will take a break and then come back and have a looser set that will include some requests. We’ll have the usual cast along with Darrell, Marty, and Ron Bowman as well…we might even get to see Edith before the night is done….who knows (we can only hope not!). Make plans to come on out if you can and we’ll be sending out directions and such later this week, so be looking for those. If you have any questions…don’t hesitate to email (calledout@calledoutquartet.com) or call (615/332-5500). Talk more about all this later this week…

 I’ve developed an interesting insight on things over the last year or so…and I’ve kind of “known” this, but really grasp it better now. You might think you understand something, but until it hits close to home, you really don’t. I read a story about a pilot who had known that about 2 million children die each year in Africa from something as simple as diarrhea, but then while volunteering as a relief pilot in the African country of Chad, one of the support cooks in the group’s two year old child died while they were out flying a mission from this simple illness we fight daily with Pepto and other over the counter meds. Before that happened she “knew” about the problem, then when she was close to the situation and befriended a child that soon died from it, the whole thing became very real. I’ve known for years that losing a parent is a terrible thing and we all dread the day we have to deal with those circumstances. I “knew” it was a terribly emotional thing folks must have to endure while seeing the ones who raised and cared for you slip away before your eyes. A little over a year ago I saw what my wife and her family went through with the sudden loss of her mom…a person I loved dearly and knew for over 20 years. We played golf together and went on vacations year after year… in almost an instant I went from “knowing” how terrible that must be to actually experiencing the circumstance in my life. Right now Lisa’s dad is barely clinging to life, and I’ve “known” how terrible it must be to watch a close loved one as they suffer through a long drawn out process of losing their life. There’s a nursing home right around the corner from my house…and while walking my dog at all hours I have seen ambulances and even hearses roll into the nursing home and “knew” it must be a sad day for someone. Seeing Lisa’s dad suffer through all this, now at that very same nursing home, has given me a first hand perspective and now I better understand. I’m sure one day, if the Lord allows, I’ll have to go through this with my parents in some fashion or another and then it will be a completely new level of understanding. I’ll just pray that’s a good long way off as both my parents are happy and healthy right now. It’s weird how all this works….knowing, to one day KNOWING something. As I pondered this week and watched the agony of my wife’s family, I began to consider knowing the Lord.

I can remember as a small child my parents would take me to “Tuesday-Thursday school”….it was what might be called “Mother’s Day Out” today, and it was at a local church… and there I began to “know” God better. Sure, mom and dad had taught me as I crawled around about God, and as I waddled about the house I’m sure they referred to Him often, but my earliest memories of God really came from that short experience. God was a great “person” who created all things and knew everything…what a great guy! I remember singing the songs about loving Jesus and about all the animals in the ark with Noah…it was neat to learn about that.

As I got older and started 1st grade, I went to a Christian school…so every day we talked about God and read from the Bible. I began to know more and more about what a cool being He was and how all the stories of the Bible were as cool as all the movies and TV shows I watched…wars, love stories, drama…it was all there. In elementary school I knew allot about God…but then came Junior High and High school and then I started going to an hour long Bible class of some variety every day. I remember my Junior Bible class the best for some reason…we studied “the prophets”…you know…the guys in the back of the Old Testament? We divided them into major prophets (like Daniel and Isaiah) and minor prophets (like Nahum and Habakkuk) and studied them deeply….took the whole school year. By the time I graduated from High School, I “knew” allot about the Lord and all of the Bible. Good stuff… and so glad I was able to enjoy that much Bible as I grew up.

College rolled around and I wanted to keep learning more about the Lord as I embarked on knowledge in other areas. I lived at the Christian Center at MTSU and we had Bible studies all the time. We talked about applications to our lives and did all this kind of stuff on our own…a personal passage into “knowing” more about the Lord and how to apply His principles in our lives. I left college (with no degree…don’t make that mistake, stay and get something while you are there even if you think you want to go out in the workplace…plenty of time for that I promise) and headed to the work place and got away from that steady stream of learning more about the Lord. I “knew” allot and I felt I was armed to go into the world. One night while with my girlfriend (now wife) I came to a better understanding about what knowing about God and KNOWING about God. The only way I can explain it is I experienced the Lord that next day in the most personal way you can, and up until that point I only knew about the Lord….now saved I KNEW about the Lord not just in my mind, but deep within my heart. It’s allot like the difference between knowing a plane can fly and actually getting in a plane and seeing for yourself and experiencing that planes do fly.

Your experiences are what make you special and unique…the places you’ve been, the things you have seen….they come together to make who you are. For those who are saved, your unique experience with God through salvation makes you a Child of the King….and that experience separates you from a person who knows there is a God and someone who KNOWS the Lord as their personal Savior. Share those experiences with people whenever you can and show them you can know God…and you can KNOW God!

Have a great week and please…come on out and see us Saturday! We’ll be recording it for a live CD and want all of you to be a part!!

Von and all the guys at CO4