I’m too old to be Gen X and too young to be a real Boomer, so it shouldn’t surprise me to find that I don’t fit in.

Don’t believe me? I still wear “relaxed fit” jeans and I refuse to switch to the latest style. (I suffered through the angst of bell bottoms in the 70s and you cannot make me go back!)

Being out of place in time really isn’t that big a deal, but I’ve been losing sleep over it. Twice lately I’ve been shocked to go to sleep a has-been and to wake up cutting-edge.

Sound confusing? Let me explain. Besides, I’m still a little confused myself. I guess I’m still dazed to find myself ahead of the crowd.

First, I went to sleep one night reading Kathleen Norris’ “Dakota,” in which she comments that we sing better theology than we preach. She praises hymns such as “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” I mentally affirmed the importance of traditional hymnody, but I felt a guilty twinge of disloyalty to the praise songs I enjoy singing on Sundays.

The next morning I woke up to National Public Radio’s report on hymns. NPR is no bastion for conservatives, let alone the religious. I listened while the coffee brewed.

“Praise songs are shallow,” said a voice.Suddenly I went from out-of-date to avante garde.

“What about ‘Just as I Am’?” asked the voice.

Amazing. I went to sleep feeling guilty for wishing praise songs would ... say more. I woke up to find hymns “rediscovered.”

This strange jolting happened again recently after I’d wondered about a sermon I’d thought was too ... well, fluffy.

Afterwards, a university student responded to the same sermon: “I don’t get it. Was he saying we’re the only ones going to heaven? Why does it have to be so deep?”

So I went to bed wondering if I’d gotten too old to know what a good sermon is. That night I prayed for more patience with the needs of others. For the spirit of community that values what others need.

The next day I went to work and found the April 1 “Christianity Today” in my mail. Seems just about the time I’d gotten used to anecdotal, “seeker sermons,” the magazine is telling our religious neighbors to reconsider the “neglected art of expository preaching” — deeper sermons.

Again? Wait a minute here! Things were switching around so fast I couldn’t remember whether I’m ahead or behind.

Let’s see. I grew up on expository preaching and it made me forget the majesty of the Cross? I probably had begun to accept the claim that expository preaching was a culprit in our micro-managing jots and tittles all the while we missed the bigger picture of the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection.

Does that make me ahead or behind?

So now I’ve changed my prayers. I pray to wake up neither behind nor ahead. Instead, I pray to wake up like Jacob, fresh from a vision of the world to come and ready for a day’s travel. I pray for lasting faith that will guide me past the hullabaloo of the church-of-what’s-happening-now. It is a frenzy to be up-to-date. It tires the bones.

I’m praying to stop worrying so much about others on the right and left, ahead and behind. I strain to hear my Shepherd.

Sound easy? It isn’t so simple as switching allegiances. After all, folks who try to figure out whether someone has strayed from the old paths are just as stuck on the world of the here-and-now as those who work hard to stay on the cutting edge of things. The problem is that too often it is a complex game of figuring out who is an “insider” and who is an “outsider.”

That’s the wrong question. I seek a lasting faith. I want to remember the lives of pilgrims who have given many years to daily service, Scripture and prayer.

They earnestly sang out what we now call the “old songs” — some set to the thumping rhythms of honky-tonk bar tunes of a previous era. They sang about Immanuel’s veins and rugged beams of wood. It wasn’t the tunes. It wasn’t the words.

It was the singing. They sang at the kitchen sink and on the tractor seat. They sang in their cars and in their fields.

Their journey was lighter because they had a song of the world to come on their hearts.

Pilgrims travel lighter when they sing a song for the road.

CONTACT SCOTT LaMASCUS at scott.lamascus@oc.edu