If you know me at all, you know I'm a HUGE Switchfoot fan. By far, though, my favorite song is the one that, as Jon Foreman puts it (paraphrasing, it's been nearly a year since I saw them last... Feeling the withdrawl... ok, maybe not) "talks about the place with no more tears, no more pain, and no more suffereing."

As I'm sure many people do, I have a journal. Sometimes I even write in it. (I swear I actually spend more time reading through old entries than I do writing new ones...) After I saw Switchfoot last, sorry, the December before last (has it been that long?), I wrote some comments about this song, seeing as it's pretty much my favorite song ever. I would go get my journal and quote some of it from that night, but my journal is in my car's trunk, it's waaay to cold out, and it's getting too late for me to be willing to get it. Anyways, that distracts from the point. I said something about liking this song for the "mindset of eternity" that it has. I thought nothing of it at the time.

Several weeks/months later I was reading through my old journal entries (see parenthetical statement from last paragraph) and stumbled upon those words again. "Mindset of eternity", I thought, "that's a mindset I want to be in a lot more". Then I proceeded to write a paragraph about my thoughts. (is that a paragraph about my thoughts about my thoughts? Maybe I'd better start doing meta-meta-journaling... Then again, I suppose that's what this paragraph is... Time to move onto meta-meta-meta-journaling...)

Until I die I'll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong
Where the righteous right the wrongs
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

This body's not my own
This world is not my own
But I still can hear the sound
Of my heart beating out
So let's go boys, play it loud

On the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side
I want to look You in the eye
And know that I've arrived
In a world where I belong

If you've never heard "Where I Belong" by Switchfoot, I encourage you to go give it a listen. Pay close attention to the lyrics.

How would the world look if everyone - or even just Christians - thought about everything with a mindset like that? I know that a lot of choices I make in my life would look very different.

Mindset of eternity

Thinking beyond the here and now.