And I Feel Fine

Damn, I just realized that the world is supposed to end ten days from now...I think. Is it the stroke of midnight on the 21st or just at some point during the day? Well, give or take a few hours, the world will end sometime on or about December 21st.

Ah, I remember the last time the world ended. Y2K. Talk about anticlimactic. It's almost as if nothing happened. Of course, I knew nothing would happen. Many years before I thought it would be cool to set the time and date on my mother's work computer to 12/31/99 23:59:00. I stood back about five feet and waited for it to explode. Nothing.

Time passed, I reached 12th grade and everyone started yapping about canned goods and shotguns. I hated my high school so much that I thought it would be just my luck for the world to end six months before graduation. On New Year's Eve I faced the difficult choice of going down to The Mall to see a free concert hosted by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett or going to church.

Now this was back when I was a Jedi-Christian and, while I had no doubt that I was going to heaven, I really thought it would look good on my resume to be in church to hold the door open for Jesus on the off chance that He might come back that night. I heard on the radio that there was going to be a big midnight service out at the old US Air Arena. I decided to go there.

I went out there all by lonesome and didn't know a single person there. There was a lot of music and different people got up to speak. The theme of the night was "We aren't worried about Y2K because we KNOW where we're going if the world ends!!!" Every single person got up to say something along those lines and the thousands of people in the audience erupted into thunderous applause.

But a funny thing happened around 11:55. They asked people to come down closer to the floor so that we could join hands and praise the Lord as we rang in the new year. Then, they turned on the giant screen so that we could simultaneously watch the ball drop and pray/sing.

I was holding hands with two girls and we were rocking back and forth singing...something. "Yay Jesus...We're going to heaven...We're not afraid!" (Not the actual lyrics. I can't remember. Just go with it.)

All I know is that around 11:58, the volume in that place turned down REAL quick. It went from a deafening roar (We're not afraid!!!) to a stirring commotion (Okay, so like...maybe we are like kinda concerned, but we aint afraid) and then by 11:59, no one was singing, no one was rocking...everybody just kinda froze (We gon' die!). The preacher wasn't even singing anymore.

Then the countdown, 5-4-3-silence-silence...and nothing. I looked to my left and my right and realized that everyone was doing the same thing. It took about five seconds to sink in. We're ALIVE! And we went right back to singing..."Yay Jesus! We told you we weren't afraid!"