God is Present Amidst the Assholes of this World

Ok,

I don't want to spend a lot of time ranting about this, partly because it's a sin to harbour bitterness, and because I need to learn from it. But you need background story...

So tonight (as night 2 of College Conniption) was a gigantic youth rally held at Elim Tabernacle, witha guest speaker, and a local band (Understated).

Thing that ticked me off #1:
We showed up 15 minutes early for our soundcheck (the worship band was doing some tuneage for the altar call after the speaker), and ended up waiting for just a little over an hour for the other band's guitar player to show up, while the rest of the band pissed around on stage (I detest waiting around when things can be accomplished, especially on a tight schedule)

Thing that ticked me off #2:
To begin with, I was poised to use the church's drumset. No big deal, right? Wrong. These drums are mic'd and in a drum cage behind plexiglass, and they stole the mics from that set to mic the band's set.

Thing that ticked me off #3:
The drummer from Understated breaks all of his sticks and steals mine off my set. I was kind of pissed for a second, but after the show, Jason and I went backstage, and he agreed to replace my sticks, and after a little convincing after that, Jason convinced the guy to let me use his decent set. The drums themselves weren't anything to write home about, but much better than those awful V-Drums the school has.

Thing that ticked me off #4:
After the show, this prick of a drummer (he has skilllllzzzzz... but a bad attitude, and Understated is a Christian band) tells me that I have cracked his already cracked cymbal, and that he would like some reimbursment for a new purchase. Ok. Maybe I did it. No one can prove it, since he didn't check the cymbals before I played. But the cymbal already had a good three inch crack along the bell. WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I knew right from the moment we had waited about half an hour for soundcheck that it wasn't going to be a pleasant night. People-wise, it wasn't.

But the worship, the preaching.....

GOD WAS THERE....

I love the lyrics to Everything by Lifehouse

How can we stand with God and not be moved by Him?
Tonight (though I am still angry and swearing a bluestreak about that arrogant drummer) was God's night. Lives changed. Not because the band was bitchin, or the preaching rocked, or that our worship set was killer, but God was there. You can't stop stuff like that.

(Oh, and it's not very likely that I'll be paying for that cymbal, and even less likely that he'll replace those sticks)