Fame and Friendship

Recently, I've been thinking about my favorite musician, Geoff Moore. Geoff writes and performs contemporary Christian rock music, though of a softer variety, maybe more CCM than rock. I would love to be friends with Geoff. I know, hard to imagine a 34 year-old being so enthusiastic about an artist, but I'm not idolizing him, and it isn't the typical infatuation that characterizes adolescent music tastes. I would love to be friends with him because his songs, in both lyrics and beat, express my deepest, most profound emotions. I feel like we are cut from the same cloth, like we are long-lost brothers. (He even looks like me, especially with his Vandyke and reddish-brown hair.) He shares my deepest longings and desires. And I'd love to talk with him about being a "passionate man", about feeling like a child wanting to be a man like Jesus, about friends who are true, who share burdens, who carry us through thick and thin, who listen and cry with us.

It's funny, I even fantasize about him moving out here and joining our church. (Very fat chance, given he's a professional musician, and an Evangelical, and I go to an obscure Arab Catholic parish.) I think of how I'd do my best to treat him as an ordinary person. I wonder if I should hide my passionate love for his music; do I try to strike up a friendship without revealing any common ground, avoiding the "fan aversion" syndrome but risking he won't ever know how much we share, or do I tell him I'm a fan but I respect his privacy and try to convince him I'm not an "ordinary" fan? I imagine he comes to my door and catches my CCM collection, as I try to figure out how to manage the situation if he sees the wide array of his albums.

Anyway, this reminds me of heaven, because I know I will be able to be friends with him in the life to come. I'll have all eternity to make, build, and enjoy a friendship with Geoff Moore. I suspect that to some degree, we'll be friends with everyone in heaven, or at least, we won't have any enemies or anyone we're at odds with, and we'll be like Will Rogers, who said that the only people he isn't friends with are those he hasn't met (or something to that effect).

I think all broken friendships will be repaired in the life to come (and I certainly have my share of them). Misunderstandings will be cleared up. Ego and past wounds won't get in the way anymore. We'll be able to see clearly. Won't that be wonderful?