Satellite

Originally posted a few years ago. Thought of it today for obvious reasons…

If I’m in the office working, I usually spend a good portion of the day listening to music on my phone—it conveniently doubles as my mp3 player, since my actual player was stolen from my car a while back.

I started off my day as I usually do, by setting the player to “shuffle” and letting my Blackberry play DJ.
Today, I started with 5 or 6 songs from P.O.D.’s CD “Satellite” all in a row.

Interesting.

It made me think of where and when I bought the CD (which I still have today). I picked it up at the Walmart in Parkway Plaza, on September 11th, 2001.

People used to talk a great deal about what they were doing that day when they heard of the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. I was on my way to work, and heard about it on the radio. I started off with my usual morning show, and then figured I’d flip to Howard Stern, since he was in New York.

Both shows were completely given over to news, and there was lots of speculation about what was going on and if and when the terrorists would strike again.

I got to my office, and someone had a boom box playing the news, and we listened to it all day. At lunch time, another Christian employee (I was a pretty new believer at the time) wanted to have a time of prayer, and I remember she had to go in her office and close the door. I regret that I didn’t go in there with her, but at the time all I could think about is listening to the radio with everyone else. Stupid, I know, but that’s where my mind was.

I got off work at the office, and headed to my second job, as a projectionist/assistant manager at Regal Cinemas Parkway Plaza 18 (I did 7 years in the booth there).

I was a little early, so I stopped off at Walmart to browse for a bit before I went to work.

I picked up the P.O.D. CD because I’d heard the song “Alive” on the radio, and thought it was pretty good. Plus, I knew they were from San Diego, and I thought it was pretty cool they’d made it sort of big, considering they were a Christian band with a positive message and lyrics that openly professed Christ.

The theater ended up closing for the day, and I sat in the booth for a little while and played the CD through twice, thinking about people jumping from windows in the World Trade Center.

Later on that evening, I had dinner with a friend at Claim Jumpers, and everyone was talking about the towers falling. I remember my friend telling me her mother told her to fill up her gas tank because fuel was going to go through the roof.

And at the end of the night, I played my CD through again.

The lyrics really hit me, because while they did glorify God in many of the songs, they also depicted real life, and real problems. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the country was going to have a tough haul for a while. And I appreciated that the band didn’t pull a lot of punches, even featuring a song using several Points of view about a school shooting.

Over the next year or so, I played that CD more than any other, and I’m kind of surprised the CD still plays well.

A God thing, maybe.

Anyway, that CD got me through a pretty tough year, and was one of several factors that helped me to see God in a completely different way than I had over the past year or so of my salvation.

Take a listen to two of my favorite songs from that CD. Great lyrics: