Wow! For a minute there....I forgot myself!!

This weekend a girlfriend and I are heading off to a homeschool conference.
It's the first one I've attended so I'm really looking forward to it. And
I'll probably sneak away from the conference to check out some music stores as
we have nothing in my hometown. I'm ready to upgrade my main keyboard as
I spend more and more time doing arrangements for violin and other instruments. But it still must be a good piano sound and feel for me to be happy with it. I hope such a thing exists in my price range.

Speaking of arranging, it's always fun when a student brings me a song they
wish to work on. The latest is Melissa O'Neil's "Original Girl".
When I first heard it I laughed because it has little piano in it (and I
couldn't see a piano accompaniment doing justice to it). So I conscripted
a guitarist (another student) and I'm busy putting a drum track with bass guitar
and some synthesized sounds to it. I'm hoping it'll sound OK when I'm done with
it.

I've often thought there are some serious problems in the whole effort to achieve positive self-esteem. I find Christians often talking about these kinds of issues and it seems to me we've bought our society's ideas without really thinking about what the Bible has to say about it. I read this from John Piper's book "Don't Waste Your Life":

the really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and comtemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.

I remember trying to explain self-forgetfulness in a discussion and struggling to find a way to communicate what I meant. Striving for our own self-interests just doesn't work. One would think that would be the secret of happiness but in reality it makes us self-centered and miserable. We need something outside of ourselves that is worthy of our focus. And that's what's so exciting and refreshing about Christianity. It explains why we are so drawn to beauty, and all kinds of ideals like honesty, integrity, self-sacrifice and compassion...because we were created by someone who characterizes all of that and more. And we were created in His image. No evolutionistic, humanistic, materialistic worldview can explain this part of our humanity. No, the prevailing views in this world cannot explain why self-forgetfulness is a positive thing and yet our experience shows that indeed it can be.