Don't Be Hatin'

I was reading the story of Cain and Abel, (It’s the story about the two brothers who both offer a sacrifice to the Lord. God is pleased with Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s. So, Cain gets angry, and he kills Abel. God asks Cain where Abel is, Cain replies with the sassy line, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” then God tells Cain that He knows what happened... There’s more to the story! So, if you’d like to read it for yourself, it’s in Genesis 4) and at first it seems like God is picking favorites. He liked Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s. Poor, pathetic little Cain... God is just so unfair, it isn’t Cain’s fault! He’d offered a sacrifice, hadn’t he?… But then, if you look at verse 7, God is talking to Cain, and He says, “If you, (Cain) do well, will you not be accepted? (ESV)” Which suggests that God isn’t picking favorites at all! Abel gave his best to the Lord, and he conducted the sacrifice the right way! So, God was pleased with the sacrifice.

But, due to verse 7, it seems that either Cain had chosen to not give his best to the Lord, or he had conducted the sacrifice either half-heartedly, or incompletely.

Either way, something was lacking in his sacrifice, and because he had not done well, God was not pleased. It makes sense, God’s not being unfair, and Cain is actually to blame for his own actions. 

Now, this is the part that really hit me:

Cain was wrong. Cain knew he was wrong. He’d had a conversation with the God of the universe to prove it! But… it was something that he could change. He could begin giving his sacrifices the amount of care that they deserved. He could begin to actually give God his best! Whatever it was that was lacking in his sacrifice, he could change it! But he had to admit that he was wrong. He had to admit that he was guilty. He knew he was! God knew he was! It wasn’t going to be a real shocker to anyone.

But, because of pride, he wouldn’t.

Instead, he turns to his innocent little brother, who had done it right. Abel’s very presence probably bugged Cain. And it was easier to focus on hating Abel than it was to admit his own sin. And Abel was a constant reminder of the things Cain knew he needed to change about himself. Without saying a single word, Abel’s presence alone reminded Cain of all the things he was doing wrong. But again, Cain wasn’t willing to admit to sin. He wasn’t willing to admit to guilt. Instead, he focused on Abel. How “righteous” Abel was, and how much it ticked him off that Abel was even born! Then, one day he lost it. He couldn’t stand being around Abel for one more second. So, filled with his own hatred, he killed Abel.

Maybe there had been a conversation, maybe Abel had said something obnoxious, maybe he’d suggested Cain change something. Maybe they were just flat-out arguing and Cain lost control! Or maybe Cain had planned the whole thing out, and he killed Abel before Abel even knew what was happening! I don’t know, but whatever happened, the point is this: Cain despised Abel to a point where he just… didn’t want Abel to live anymore. It was time for Abel to go. Abel was innocent, but because Cain did not want to face his own guilt, he killed the thing that reminded him most frequently of his shortcomings.

That seems so crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, who would never kill someone just because the other person got on their nerves?

Well… we would. But with obvious punishments for killing people, we probably wouldn’t go that far nowadays, but… sometimes we want to. We have the same attitudes that led Cain to that place where he could justify killing his own brother. They’re ugly thoughts and attitudes that are honestly there just to protect us from what we already know: we have work to do in our own hearts.

I’ve watched it happen over and over with friends, and it’s just… heartbreaking. Girls are especially bad at doing this!

There will be a group of girls, and they’ll be perfectly happy right where they are. Talking about guys the way they do, dressing the way they do, having the attitudes towards parents that they do, spending time however they spend it, they’ll just be happy with their standards.

And then the new girl comes in.

Maybe she doesn’t talk about guys as much. Maybe she dresses a little more modestly. Maybe she’s really close to her parents, and maybe she really respects them. Maybe she carries her Bible around with her, and reads it when she’s sitting alone, or maybe she’s just a really, really nice person who never seems to have a cross word for anyone.

Or maybe it’s a combination of some of those things, but whatever it is, suddenly the group of girls feels threatened, because her standards challenge theirs. The new girl may be nothing but nice to them, but even her niceness is hard to deal with, because the group of girls have gone into defensive-mode so they’re acting as if they really could not care less if she dropped off the face of the earth, and her niceness almost makes it harder…

See, the new girl may be sweet, and dear, and just… a great person! But she lives by standards that the group of girls does not. And maybe her standards are too high! But, maybe she’s right to do the things she does… The problem is that sometimes we’re way too much like that group of girls, and we can take people with different standards and beliefs, and we run from them, instead of seeing them as opportunities to re-think those areas of our own lives, to see if maybe this person is a way God is using to point out an area where He really isn’t in control, or if their ideas would be ideas that God could use to mold some of our opinions. We run from them. We get protective of our choices, and we don’t want to think about the fact that we could be wrong. We alienate the new person, or we’re “nice” to them, but we’re not really open, because they make us feel… guilty. And instead of trying to figure out if that feeling of guilt is coming from the fact that, deep down, (even if we aren’t willing to admit it to ourselves), we do need to change, we just… avoid the person!

Unfortunately, it is way too easy to become the group of girls. It’s easy to get around someone who seems to do EVERYTHING right, and feel judged, inadequate, less than we are. It’s easy to turn on them, and make them out to be the bad-guy, rather than taking a step back, looking at ourselves and saying, “Okay. Am I doing something wrong here?”

We get defensive and start putting up walls against people who are just… living! How stupid is that?! It’s unfair. It’s wrong. And it does not honor God.

And it’s really hurtful, too… I’ve also had several different friends look at me and say, “I just don’t get it! Why don’t they like me?!”… and it was for this very reason. It’s unfair to the person being put on the outside. It’s unfair to punish someone else because you don’t want to maybe be face-to-face with your own sin. It’s not right to treat someone coldly because they might be doing something right in an area that you’re doing something wrong. It’s just… wrong to treat people that way. And I think you'll find that if you give that "perfect" person a chance, you'll see that they are just as human as you are...

But, just to sum-up here, I’m not saying that every Christian should agree on everything all the time, and we should all dance around agreeing on super-high standards, and welcoming any chance to make those standards even higher until we get to a point that our children are being born perfect because they have no other choice. Obviously, that’s a flawed, totally impractical plan. 

But, for goodness sake, we can take the pride, defensiveness and passive-aggressive hatred out of our relationships! Jesus died for all of us! The super-conservative girl who quotes verses with every-other breath, and the extremely liberal girl who is in love with Jesus, and that’s about all she’s got figured out. If you’re a Christian, the God of the universe died for you! You have no right to hate anyone, ever! Especially if that person simply gets under your skin because they’re “perfect”. No one is perfect. Everyone has problems. Everyone has hurts. And everyone wants to be loved! So, get over yourself, get over your pride, check your motives for choices against the Bible, and then love that person! That’s what God has commanded of us! We’re supposed to love!! And if God could love you… you can love that person.

Ask God for His help. Ask Him to help you love them! He knows it’s hard… But He’s there to help you. He will help you. Just… ask Him.

One plus One equals One

A few months ago, I started reading through the New Testament a chapter at a time. It’s been pretty slow going, but I really don’t mind. See, by taking it a chapter at a time, I have plenty of time to really reflect on the verses! And I have been getting so much more out of the Bible! It’s been… amazing.

Last weekend we went on a retreat with my cousins’ church. The speaker spent every session on the book of Joshua. And as I was sitting there, listening to all that he was pulling out of this overlooked book, I had a desire to read through the Old Testament and see what amazing things I can learn that I’ve overlooked so many times before! So, I’m doing that now too!

I’m only a few chapters into Genesis, but as I’m sure you’ve probably assumed, I’ve gotten something that I think is cool out of it! Hence this post!

I’ve heard how God made Eve out of Adam’s rib about a bajillion times. And… (I’m just gonna flat-out say it), I have always thought that the fact that Eve was made out of a rib was weird. I’ve also thought that the fact that this obviously left Adam one-rib-sort of a full person was a little unfortunate for him. I mean, honestly, how would you feel if one day you fell asleep and you woke up to find that you were not alone anymore! And this person sitting next to you was created from a piece of you... and now you lacked a piece of you.

And it’s not like you could see what you were lacking, it’s not like God chopped off Adam’s arm and handed it to Eve! God took a really intimate part of Adam. He took something from Adam’s very insides, and used it to create Eve… And when Adam woke up, he was not only lacking a bit of himself, but he was staring into the eyes of the person who now owned it.

Of course, someone could really make this an extremely sweet and mildly cheesy thought. Just throw in a couple of good-old Hallmark Card sayings, and boom. You’ve got a mushy love story.

But, think about the situation honestly! How weird would it be to be Adam? Or Eve?! Why didn’t God just make Eve out of dust too? Then no one would be missing a part of themselves! The situation would be weird enough on its own! Why throw in the rib part too?

The whole thing just never made sense to me, and I was content thinking that it was just a really strange part of creation.

But, in reading it for myself the other day, it fascinated me… the way the verses are set up. After God makes Eve out of Adam’s rib, and Adam rejoices at her existence, it says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 ESV)

“One flesh”…

That phrase has always kind of confused me too. Obviously, they were two different people. Anytime people are married, they are two different people! Why the “one flesh” phrase? It doesn’t make sense.

Then my thoughts when back to that rib…

Adam really was not one whole entire person without his rib. He was missing something. He was missing something that in every practical sense made him a whole being. And Eve had exactly what he was missing! Adam was not a completely whole, one person, without Eve! On his own he was lacking… he was lacking what she had. He needed her to be a complete being. And she needed him too! Without him, she would be lacking a rib as well! Because of him, she was a whole, one person. But they had to have each other to become complete. Together, they were one.

Then it all clicked. The rib made sense! The phrase “one flesh” made sense too! And once it clicked, the picture of the rib was… beautiful. It was an extremely open, yet extraordinarily intimate picture of two people becoming one…

There may be more to the rib and to the phrase “one flesh” than what I’ve written here. In fact, I’m pretty positive that there is! But, the two ideas finally connected for me, and it made a previously confusing and altogether odd situation into something that I think I’ll cherish… And the more I think about it, and the more God reveals, the more beautiful the idea of two people becoming one is to me… It really is beautiful. A little mysterious, and still a little difficult to fully understand, but… it is quite beautiful.

Selfish Sunflowers

The other day I learned something new!

Sunflowers follow the sun. Like, in the morning, they open up, and through the entire day their face is toward the sun! They move with it! When the sun moves across the skies, the faces of the flowers follow right behind!

(If you’re a Christian, I’m pretty sure you know where I’m gonna go with this. So yes, here’s a cheesy analogy for you. But it got me excited! So I’m sharing it!)

I feel like, as Christians, we should be sunflowers. Our entire existence should be focused around following Christ, following the Son, wherever He leads. Our faces should be always turned toward Him. And what’s more is… that’s how we should be defined! We should be defined as a people whose faces are always turned toward Him! That’s how we should be seen! People should not be able to think of us without thinking of God.

When you imagine a sunflower in your mind, how do you imagine it? For me, I see a small garden, with big, yellow (like they come in any other color) sunflowers, on a bright sun-filled day. In my mind, it looks like a day where, if you were inside, you could almost feel the warmth of the sun without even setting your foot out the door… That’s how it is in my mind! And to separate the sunflower from the sun just seems wrong. I have to actually make myself image a sunflower on a gloomy, sunless, rainy day… it just doesn’t seem natural. It’s just hard to separate the sunflower from the sun.

In our lives, it should be hard to be able to separate our actions, activities, personalities… anything, away from God. See, I think God should be our motivation for… everything! And that doesn’t mean living your life with your nose in the Bible all the time, either!

What I mean is… well, I don’t know how else to say it without an example so… I play the guitar. I love the guitar. I just truly cherish music as a whole, and the guitar has a way of… breathing music. When I hold a guitar, I have magic in my hands! And I just… love it. But, I really don’t want to simply get lost in my love of music. The way I see it is, God is the one who gave me a love for music in the first place! And I want to thank Him for giving me this love. So, when I act on this love by playing, I try to always make sure that I’m playing… for Him. But that’s so much easier said than done! Sometimes I have to remind myself when I play that I should never be playing for me. I should never be playing so people will say, “Oh wow. That song, did you just write it? You did? Seriously?! Wow… it was really good.” I mean, the handfuls of times where someone has been kind enough to say that has felt… really good. I like it when people like what I’ve played, especially when it’s something that I’ve written. And every now and then I’ll find myself in a situation where maybe I could show off a little, (not that I’m really all that great! But when you’re in a room of people who can’t play diddly-dot on any instrument, just a couple of strums with a few simple chord changes can leave them thinking you’re some sort of musical master-mind!) So, in those situations, if I let the focus of my music be… me, then what’s the point? There is no point, except to feed my own pride. So I have to check myself, and I have to check my motives, and sometimes I won’t even pick up the guitar because I’m not sure if I’m trying to show off myself, or if I’m trying to bless someone else through the words of the songs that God has laid on my heart.

I know to some people that will seem like an insanely over-thought process. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I’m playing a guitar! Big whoop! And maybe I have taken it too seriously, but… I never want to get in the way of someone else seeing God. If the lyrics I’ve written can touch someone’s heart, then I want to share them! Even if they’re funny lyrics! Sometimes humor is an amazing way to open people up! And it’s an amazing way to let people know that you love them! And if someone asks me to play something I’ve written, then I’m more than happy to share! But, I never want to allow myself to be the focus. Because, without God, I wouldn’t care one itty bitty bit about music. He gave me this love! And He gave it to me as a tool to glorify Him! And that’s what I always want to do with it…

So, what I’m trying to say is… don’t belittle the loves God has given you, because He gave them to you for a purpose, and that purpose was not to glorify yourself! So, don’t let yourself become the focus of your gifts. He has given them to you, and He deserves to be glorified and praised for blessing you with those unique qualities!

And seriously, do you really want to be that guy who only used his talents to raise himself? I mean, really. Once we die, does it matter how many compliments we’ve gotten in this life? No. It doesn’t. At all. But it does matter whether or not we’ve used our gifts to glorify Him. That… that really does matter…

You see, selfishness and pride are evil little things, and when left alone they can quickly grow into a big-little things; big, fat, ugly things that control every single aspect of your life. They hurt you, and they hurt the people around you. They are two things that, as a Christian, you have to keep in check at all times, because, other than really hurting people that God has put in your life, destroying you, your relationships, and sucking your joy out of everything, more than all of that is this: With selfishness and pride, you become center-stage, and you leave God to be the stagehand of your life. And that… That really doesn’t fly.

Think about this: If you saw a sunflower, and it was turned to itself; if it’s petals were touching on either side, and it was bent over its own stem, What would you think? You’d probably think it was ugly, wouldn’t you? It would be ugly! There would be something wrong with it! It would be unnatural!

If we love ourselves so much that all we do is focus on us, then we’re ugly too. We just look… wrong.

But, when a sunflower has its petals opened wide, and its face is turned completely to the sun, then it becomes absolutely breathtaking. So is a Christian whose eyes are focused on God. We become breathtaking, because we are not the focus, we are not center-stage, we aren’t even thinking about center-stage! Our only focus is Him.

What would a sunflower be without the sun?

What would a Christian be without Christ?

Lost.

Closed.

Useless.

Dead.

So, turn your face toward the Son. He’s waiting to shine His beauty through you…

He Fills Our Hearts

Today was neat! Lunch at the school was great. After which, I came home and slept for… I don’t even know how long. And then we ate food! After dinner, we attempted to clean up, and somehow clean up became a massive wrestling match with all 5 of us kids. It was so much fun!

After the kitchen was clean my older cousin, little brother and sister got ready to go to a highschoolers’ lock-in at my cousin’s school. Once they were all ready, they left the apartment to go to the school and… stay awake all night.

My youngest cousin isn’t quite at the highschool age, so he had to stay here at the house. I’d stayed up really late the night before, and as fun as I am when I don’t sleep, I figured it’d be more beneficial to myself and to the rest of humanity if I stayed and actually went to sleep at some point in the night. Also, I’ve missed my cousin! And I figured that we might as well have a lock-in of our own! Even though I figured we’d end up sleeping. But sleep is beautiful. So that was okay with me.

We were just going to watch a movie with my aunt and uncle. It was some alien movie… But before we could watch it, we had to let it download, (we bought the movie on iTunes). I had a couple of e-mails that I wanted to reply to. My cousin was killing people on the Playstation with the new games my brother had given him, so I pulled out the laptop and began to type. A friend had sent me a link to a funny video on Youtube, and after I’d watched it, a link popped up to see the Miss America pageant from when Miss South Carolina gave her famous, “Like, such as” speech. I pulled out my earphones, and my aunt came over to watch it too. She leaned on the couch and laughed. A lot. My cousin had finished his game. So, he came over and sat next to me on the couch… and he laughed! A lot! We all laughed. A lot. I’m sure Jesus was so proud of us…

Well, after that my cousin and I spent a good long time watching various videos that showed… uh… “special” people… It was funny. And then he showed me these videos of people who are insanely good at playing basketball… er—really just throwing the basketball from unrealistically difficult places. It was so cool! Then we went from that, to me continuing my typing, and him playing his game on the iPad, connected by a shared pair of earphones. I played some of my favorite music, and we just kind of sat like that for a while. Occasionally we’d sway in unison to the music, and once or twice I pulled a sarcastic life lesson from the lyrics that we were both only half-listening to.

After a bit, the movie downloaded fully, and we started it. The movie was “Darkest Hour” and to be honest, it… it was... kind of… stupid.

But anyway, I sat on the couch and my cousin laid down, leaning against me. I spent most of the movie completely ruining his hairdo. By the time I was done playing with his hair, he looked like he’d stuck his finger in a socket. Twice.

The movie ended, and we lost my aunt and uncle to the depths of sleep. My cousin and I returned to sharing earphones, showing one another some of our favorite songs. Right now, he’s sitting next to me, playing a game on his iPad while I write…

And just a minute ago, it hit me. I would not choose to be anywhere else but right here in this moment with him…. Tonight will be a night that I hold very closely in my heart. Wrestling with my siblings and cousins in-between cleaning dishes, and then spending hours with my, “Little Buddy”, doing nothing more than sitting next to each other, watching movies and playing music…

See, these nights, these moments… they’re the things that really mean the world to me. They’re the moments that I love. The moments where I can simply… be, with the ones who make my world what it is! I love my cousins. I love them so much. And right now, sitting here with my Buddy at my side, life is… perfect.

I hope that I will never forget to cherish these moments. I hope that I’ll learn how to love them more deeply! And I hope I’ll learn how to notice everyday moments that could be turned into lifelong memories.

I hope I’ll always want to keep my loved ones close, and that a couch and a little bit of music with someone I love will always be something that fills my heart, and turns my mind to the goodness of God.

You see, He gave me this moment. He gave me tonight. And words cannot express how thankful I am that He does give me nights like tonight.

He truly does know the desires of our hearts. He knows our hearts, and He knows how to fill them… And He does fill them. Sometimes through a kind word from a stranger, sometimes through a feeling that He gives you, just to let you know He’s there, and sometimes… Sometimes through a shared pair of earphones with your Little Buddy at your side…

And the Culture is Still Shocking...

So, during the past couple of days I’ve picked up on a few other… oddities of this part of the world. If you wish to read them, then enjoy! If not, then I’m sure you could find something more productive to do…

The other day was extremely special. We spent most of our time outside either walking or riding in one of the many forms of public transportation. It still freaks me out when I’m walking down the street and a group of people starts talking near me. Not because they’re talking, (I’m from America, for goodness sake. Talking happens to be one of the abilities that my entire nation has mastered quite well…) but I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that people can have whole conversations with words that are not in the English language. So, they sound like a group of babbling crazy people. Until I remember that the babbles actually mean something to them. But, they mean nothing to me. So it’s confusing.

One day, while walking, (naturally) there was a man on the street rolling a marijuana cigarette. In broad daylight! See, in America, rolling marijuana is a little thing called… illegal…But no, not here! Here it is perfectly fine…

Oh, there was also a Marijuana March one day! To legalize the selling of it. See, they can’t sell it or buy it, (those things are still illegal—even over here) but they can grow it and smoke it! I think it’s a weird way to set up the laws, but... no one asked me. So anyway, for some reason the people, who were already high on the marijuana they’d grown themselves, thought they should march through the streets, blocking traffic and filling the air with the smell of their lovely pastime, to proclaim to the government that they were responsible enough to handle selling and buying the drug… I’m sure it worked out in their favor…

Oh! On the same day as the High-walkers there was a zombie march! This was a completely pointless march where people dressed up as un-dead dead people, oozed fake blood from their eyes and lips, groaned, and spent hours walking through the streets (it was in a different section of the city). That was fun. Especially when the Zombies felt like scaring you, because their attempts at terror basically consisted of growling and hissing. So they gave the impression of large, bleeding cats in need of a major attitude adjustment…

Oh goodness, what else… I know! One time I was sitting on the subway, my little sister was next to me, and a lady got on and decided to sit across from us. She had 3 piercings in her ears, and a gage in her earlobe, her earlobes stretched to almost the middle of her neck. Her nose was pierced, and her eyebrows too. She had a piercing on either side of her mouth, and one in the middle, below her nose and above her lip. She had a lip ring as well. But, something I’d never seen before was the studs that she had in her chest. She had two piercings, one right in the middle of her collarbone, and one about 2 inches below it, and they were just studs sticking out of her skin! I had no idea how she’d managed to get those piercings, but… there they were! Just sitting there, in her chest! It was very special.

The amount of public displays of affection is really surprising; kissing, leaning into one another, walking with their hands on each other’s rears, leaning against buildings and having… a moment. It’s really strange! And the most awkward thing that I’ve found is this: When a couple is making out, they’re very much into it, and you make the mistake of glancing over, sometimes one of them will look up and just stare at you. They won’t stop having their moment! Oh no, they just continue on, while staring you down with this completely blank stare. It is the creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced!!

And the blank stare isn’t exclusive to the “Those who are making out” group either! The population here is the most expressionless group of people I have ever seen! It’s like an art! “How little emotion can you show throughout the day”. They are like stone walls walking through life. I know they feel, think, and talk (occasionally) but you wouldn’t know it to watch their faces. Their expressions are practically nonexistent.

And the most shocking thing happened just the other day:

We were at Burger King, (yeah, they have that here!) And my cousin had his foot up on the booth. He’d just gotten back from a camping trip, and he had ‘Tired’ written all over his sunburned face. Well, one of the Burger King employees did not like the fact that he had his foot up, so she walked over, stood in front of him, stared at him and moved her finger in a motion to put his foot down. She then spoke a few irritated words that I could not understand, and walked away. When she happened to walk by again, my uncle started to say to her that my cousin was just a kid, that we were her guests, but she would have none of it! She just argued with him! It was crazy!

That would never happen in America. Ever.

I went with my cousins and their friends to see “The Avengers” at the theater. It was in English! I’ve gotten to the point now where anything English excites me, be it a sign or a movie or just a random person speaking it! There were subtitles for those in the theater that couldn’t speak English. But, when I got my ticket, I realized that they actually assign you your seating. The theater hands you a ticket with a seat number on it! It was so odd… American theaters give you the choice to sit wherever your butt so desires! But not here… There weren’t many people in the theater though, so I sat where I wanted. Because I’m a rebellious American…

And finally, the money freaks me out. When someone hands me a bill, and it has a “200” on it, I think to myself, “Okay, you just handed me 200 dollars. You’re crazy. And I’m rich.” Then I find out that in American dollars, the bill is only worth about 11 dollars. When I buy a hamburger, and it costs “127.00 crowns” it confuses me! Because no hamburger is worth 127 dollars! Especially not one from McDonalds! But then I realize that it’s only about a few dollars in American money. It’s so confusing…

Beautiful Scars

Yesterday was really great.

I met several of my cousins’ friends. I went to their youth group, and their worship band played several songs that I hadn’t heard in years.

It was a little warm outside and since I knew we’d be walking a lot and we’d be standing in super crowded buses and trams throughout the day, I acted upon my aunt’s suggestion and wore shorts.

I really dislike wearing shorts. I really, really dislike wearing shorts… I get tired of looking at my legs.

I know that sounds weird, but I have scars on my legs. And I just get sick of looking down and seeing them.

I know most everyone has a scar or two. It’s not an uncommon thing; but… they aren’t pretty. They never will be! They tell of stories, situations, and things I’ve experienced in my life. They will never go away. They’ll always be right there, in the same places, waiting for me to glance down. They’ll always be there. Always.

See, I’ve come to know several things about scars:

You aren’t born with them.

They always have a story.

The story is always unique.

The story is always one of pain.

And somehow the scar makes the person even more unique than they were before.

My scars define the real difference between my legs and anyone else’s. No one’s knees or ankles will look quite like mine, because they haven’t gone through the experiences that I have. My scars help to define… me.

I think that’s the way it works in life too.

It’s a concept I’ve been thinking about for a while, and after spending an entire day trying to ignore the scars on my own body, I decided I’d finalize the thoughts and lay them to rest in my own mind.

Life hurts.

We were born innocent, soft, and completely ignorant of pain, heartache, and the evils we’ll encounter in this world. Then we started to live, we started to grow, and in growing we started to experience life. We came to find that it hurts. Before we knew it we were being tossed around and somehow in someway life jabbed at our hearts, made us bleed, and left behind a trail of scars.

Everyone has scars.

Each of those scars has a story.

Each of those stories is unique.

Each of them is a story of pain.

And each scar has helped to mold the person into who they are today.

Another weird thing about bodily scars is the tissue they’re made up of. Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Yeah, scars are ugly to look at, but they’re made up of strong stuff! I think that’s the way scars in our lives work too. Their stories are typically deep, painful and personal. They are usually ugly marks left over from harsh times in our lives. But because of them, we’re stronger… We’re so much stronger…

When we were little, before we ever hurt ourselves too badly, the littlest scrape would cause us to dissolve into tears. A little blood, and that was it! We needed help right then. Mommy had to drop everything and kiss our boo-boos, bandage our scrapes, assure us that we weren’t dying, and listen to us whine about how much it hurt. But then as we got older, we learned what it meant to really feel pain. We began handling the tiny scrapes with ease; sometimes not even noticing they’d made an appearance until the pain was gone and they’d scabbed over nicely! The things that deserved attention continued getting it, and the things that did not need to be fussed over were left alone. We grew stronger, and through our newfound strength and understanding, began to react to pain in a healthy way.

(Yeah, I’m going to use that paragraph to make some sort of analogy for the pain in our lives. You should be getting used to this by now, so you really shouldn’t be surprised…You know, incase if you were planning on being surprised, I just figured I’d tell you that it’s an unnecessary reaction.)

Life makes scars, but it’s full of tiny scrapes too! Bad days, irritating people, temptations to sin, and so much more! We have the ability to blow them up into gigantic problems, just like when we were little, we’d blow our tiny scrapes up into big deals. But after life picks us up and throws us around a little bit, we begin to be able to choose our battles. We begin to be able to brush things off. We begin to act with maturity, mercy and grace. We acquire the ability to ignore the tiny scrapes of life, and focus on the bigger issues.

Eventually we are also able to turn to our side and see someone else hurting. We’re able to lend a helping hand to them as well, because we know how it feels to hurt. We know how it feels when those scars haven’t become scars yet, but they’re just a bloody mess of torn tissue. We know how it feels to have something rip us apart, and we know how it feels to know, even before it’s hardly started, that the process of healing will be long, and when we come through the other end, we will not look the same as we did before. We know. So, we can sympathize with those whose hearts are breaking.

And also, if we didn’t feel the pain, if we didn’t have the scars, we could never be the people God has made us to be. We weren’t born with scars, no, but we were born with problems. We were born with a sin nature. It takes time to chip away at that nature, and replace it with attitudes, thought processes and actions that glorify God. And when we’ve gone through that process, when we’ve chipped away at a bit of ourselves, and replaced it with something from Him, it does leave a scar. Sometimes just a tiny one, sometimes a big, fat, gnarly one, but it leaves a scar all the same. It hurts to have a bit of ourselves removed, but the scar that is left behind signifies something much more beautiful than what was there before! It signifies Christ’s holiness in our lives. It shows where He has taken our ugliness, our humanness, our sin, and removed it far, far from us. And it shows where He has allowed us the privilege of loving, honoring and serving Him.

Scars hurt. They’re ugly, and sometimes we wish we never had any. The process of getting a scar is a difficult one, and we never look the same afterward. But, they make us stronger. They are learning tools that God uses to make us who we are- who He wants us to be.

So please, don’t curse the scar, or the journey you had to take to acquire it; but instead, thank the God who loves you enough to shape you and mold you into the most beautiful creation that you could ever be.

Not So Common

Something I have recently started doing is writing out my thoughts when I’m reading my Bible. It helps me to think more clearly. It also helps me to put little thought-fragments into whole ideas. I don’t know if that makes sense, and if it doesn’t please tell me and I’ll try to explain it more!

I’d like to share one of the things that hit me while I was reading the other day, for anyone who would like to know…

I was reading in Acts, chapter 10. This is the chapter in which God tells Peter through a vision that the strict rules about what is clean and what is unclean are removed. The wording of verse 15 hit me, “…What God has made clean do not call common.”

My notes were simply this:

“… God made me clean through Jesus. God made me clean. I wasn’t before; I am now. I’m not common anymore. I’m not to be overlooked, disdained by others, hated by God. I am not common- and neither is any one of God’s Children. We’re all made clean! There is nothing wrong with us! Nothing! We are not common anymore…”

I feel like it’s really easy to forget that we aren’t common, we aren’t unholy, and we aren’t unworthy. In our sinfulness, yeah, we are pretty rotten. On our own, we deserve Hell! But… When Jesus died for us, He wiped all of that away. He took the common and unholy beings that we were, and made us extraordinary! When God looks at us, He sees His Son. He sees His Son’s holiness, His Son’s worthiness. Just… thinking about that… When God looks at us, He sees Jesus’ perfection. On our own, we aren’t anything special. But with Jesus, we’re children of the King! That’s who we are! Not what we are! WHO we are! So, who are we to say we’re just average people; that we’re just like everyone else…. That’s not true. We are deeply loved, deeply cherished, completely precious to the God of the Universe! He has made us clean. We aren’t common anymore…