The lake concert in 2012. The scenery is truly beautiful.

It was more than 15 years ago when a family from our local church initiated a tradition of worship concerts. In the beginning it was just a simple invite for some friends to come over for a Sabbath afternoon and sing together. And then it started to grow. They started to invite other friends over to listen to this singing. And as they are a very influential family in that place where they live, more and more people started to come. Now it has ended up being a full-scale concert + preaching on a platform on their own private lake with sometimes up to 200 people in the audience listening.

I've never missed one 'lake concert' (as we call it), it is an essential part of my summer as our family has always been involved in it. For many years I've been singing and playing my violin there. As a teenager I admired the preachers who spoke to mostly non-Christian audience. I've heard my dad preach there for couple of times. Last year I was the invited speaker and I got to share the Gospel news with those people.

We had yet another lake concert yesterday evening.

It brought back all the sweet and painful memories from the past. Last year's concert took place in the beginning of August and it must have been one of the toughest weekends in my life. I have very fragmented memories from that weekend. On Friday morning we found out that my mum had cancer, I remember sitting on my parents bedroom floor, absolutely gobsmacked by the terrible news. I remember being on a bus later that evening, trying not to cry too much. I remember preaching on Sabbath morning, not having slept and not having eaten, begging for God's strength to take me through the sermon. And I remember arriving on the lake concert site on Sunday afternoon, once again having to preach the Gospel to others, with my own heart being completely broken. And I remember going home that night and rushing to hospital the next morning to tell my mum how wonderfully everything had gone despite our own tragedy.

I couldn't get rid of all those pictures in my head last night. And I know that the time is over when my grief was socially acceptable and I can't go around crying my eyes out publicly so I kept my thoughts to myself, but it wasn't an easy evening. But something happened there that really calmed my mind and soothed my pain. In the end of the concert we sang a song with a women's chorus about the day when Jesus comes back and restores everything and wipes away all the tears we've cried. And you wouldn't believe, the sheet of music with this song had been copied by my mum. IT WAS HER HANDWRITING. So I sang about Jesus' return and our blessed hope, reading the words and music my mum had written down. Maybe it was just a coincident, I don't know. But for me it was a reminder of her, waiting for the restoration of all things too. It was almost as if Jesus had sent a little text message to me. "Don't worry, she's safe. You'll all make it Home alright."