I still remember where we were when we got the news.
1997.
Our apartment at Timber Cove Apartments in Decatur.
Having a get-together with many of our friends from high school days.
One of them walked in and told us.......
"Rich Mullins died today."
20 years later, a great remembrance of Rich --
The son of an Indiana tree farmer who grew up on cornbread and beans, Rich was never interested in making a name for himself. He saw his music as a signpost—as Smith calls it, “an arrow pointing to Heaven.” One could describe his entire 41 years on earth that way. He donated much of his substantial income from record sales, lived a semi-monastic life along with the other members of a group he called “The Kid Brothers of Saint Frank,” and spent most of his final months on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico teaching music to schoolchildren.
“If my life is motivated by ambition to leave a legacy,” he said, “what I’ll probably leave as a legacy is ambition. But if my life is motivated by the power of the Spirit in me—if I live with the awareness of the indwelling Christ, if I allow his presence to guide my actions, to guide my motives, those sorts of things. . . . That’s the only time I think we really leave a great legacy.”
Read the rest:
His music: relevant and meaningful -- still today.
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt
p.s. a previous MattChat post on Rich Mullins: