It's NOT YOUR show!

Lately, I have been bothered by the show that seems to be going on day after day on my Christian campus: this is a show that I believe, is not only showing at Huntington, but a wide-spread plague taking over many Christian communities and hearts. Christians seem to be making their religion a show, starring the wrong character. You see, if Christian life were a movie, one should be able to watch the entire thing and not even really know the main character's name. They should get to the end of the movie and see every name popping up in the credits being one person: God. However, looking around, too many people, myself included at times, are trying to earn their spot in the closing credits. 

I know I often fight for the glory in the things I do. I am often more so concerned with how a certain task or action is making me look instead of being worried about if God is being reflected. I try to do community service because it looks good, not because I am called to love God's people and to be His hands and feet. I read my Bible because it is what I am supposed to do, not because I want to get closer to God. I want to lessen my complaining, and ranting and certain phrases so that I look to be a better Christian not simply because God doesn't want me to be that way. I have the direction that I want to go in life and expect God to just keep rewriting His plans around what I want to do...I want to have the final say in who the main character of my movie really is. I want the glory of appearing in the opening and ending credits. I want to cast who I want in my life; not to love those who persecute me. I just want to write my own script, not follow the one that has been set out for me. 

Other than trying to earn a place in their own movie, it seems like too many Christians are concerned with becoming the top earning actress, the most loved by the world, the award winning actor....they are trying to top their teammates: always trying to one-up the next person in line. Christianity is not a competition, Christianity is a partnership, not only between God and HIS followers, but each of HIS followers. 
 
This week alone I have heard people competing over who has the better Bible, who had the better praise and worship experience, who is the "most Godliest", and so many more. First of all, it doesn't matter what Bible someone uses; each person should get the Bible that they understand. Having a closer translation Bible does absolutely no good when one does not read it or understand it. There is no such thing as being a better worshiper either....God connects with each of us in a different way, some people really feel Him during worship and others experience Him in the simple sounds of nature. It does not say anywhere in the Bible that people have to go to church every Sunday; God would rather have the people who want to be at church be there than have everyone feel like they have an obligation to be at church. Church is important, but nobody is going to Hell for skipping one Sunday. Christianity is not supposed to be a competition of who can get the most awards or who can come across as the better Christian....it is a goal of winning hearts; which will happen more through truth.

Those are just my accumulated thoughts for the week. I am really trying to work on each of these things in my own life...I am giving up the credits to my movie and giving up the dream of being the best. Christians are simply called to be the people looking in the mirror...not who is being reflected in the mirror.

<3 D

The Friendship Bracelet

 Today I have been really missing my youth group and my girls back home. In one of my classes, I glanced down at the woven bracelet that one of my girls made for me before I left for school this year. It has five different colors, one color for each of the girls whom I am really close to. She made it so I could look down at my wrist and know that five girls were thinking about me, five girls loved me and missed me greatly. When Meg first tied it to my wrist, the colors were vibrant, the braid was tight, the ends were crisp, nothing could possibly break this bracelet unless it were cut by scissors. Each of these characteristics were symbolic of the friendship I had with each of these amazing girls. We had survived one year of me being in college and them being in high school and came out stronger than we had been before: nothing could break us. Together, God gave us the strength to break through any obstacle, we were each shinning bright with HIS love and was reading to conquer our next years of school.

Today I looked down at this bracelet and it had morphed. The colors are now faded from being always present on my hand. One of the braids has completely unfrazzled. Instead of being straight, the sides are curved up and under in different spots. The material is not nearly as tight anymore, instead it is easily stretched.This really brought me down.

Then I got to thinking...these girls are still an important part in my life; but both sides of this bracelet are growing. They are in high school now, they are finding out who they are, they are making their own friends and growing. Yet they know that I am still going to be there, not just a bracelet around their wrist, I am marked in their lives.

They aren't the only ones growing. This year in itself, I have made some new impacting friendships. Some of the old ones, that I was sure were going to last forever have faded and have left some new really challenging and exciting ones in their place. As I sit here, putting messages on my girls' walls on facebook, I am getting ready to go to dinner with a new friend that I never would have met had I allowed this bracelet to be my life. I am realizing that change is essential to growth. Growth does not mean leaving everyone behind, but being able to embrace more. Growth means reminiscing about the old and tattered friendship bracelet while I tie a new one next to it.

<3 D