Hi Friends! This past week I worked at VBS at my church. I had a great time learning all the fun songs and hanging out with some pretty cool third graders. One kid in particular was able to remind me a little bit about what trusting Jesus looks like because I seemed to have forgotten for a second. So one of our activities was to cut a single piece of paper so that we could both fit through it. At first, I was thinking oh goodness this is going to be a mess. I couldn’t see how this was going to work. But the little boy was excited and wanted to start cutting. He was ready to give it his best shot. I told him to wait and let’s think about it for a second because I wanted to get it right. He was still eager to cut so I eventually decided to just let him go for it. He started cutting and I watched as he cut in a way that opened the paper so that we could both fit through it. I never thought of cutting it like that. We moved on to the next activity and that was that. Though today during church I kept thinking about this moment. And eventually I realized that God might have been trying to teach me something through that tiny little moment.
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Social media is a blessing and a curse. With its good comes it bad. While it provides us with things like keeping up with friends, finding places to travel, getting inspiration, etc. I find that most of these things are just excuses for us to justify it. I mean not all social media is negative. Sometimes it really can be used for good, like discovering hidden talents and sharing the good and important things in our lives. But other times it is a place where we can feel very negative about ourselves, very easily. It is most always a highlight reel. We share the moments of bliss. Not the ones where we are hurting. Which isn’t a bad thing because privacy is good, but from the outside when we see these perfect pictures we instantly wonder what we’re doing wrong. Why does my stomach not look like that, I want her hair, her outfits are so much cuter than mine, and list goes on. It’s an instant comparison and so often unconscious effort. It’s a picture after picture highlight reel comparison that drains the confidence from us- sometimes without us even noticing.
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Life is full of choices. We make choices every day, sometimes so often, we don’t even realize we’re making a choice. In the mornings, we make the choice to get out of bed early or sleep in, we chose what we want to eat, and who we want to spend the day with. But sometimes the choices we make run deeper than the day to day routine. Sometimes these deeper choices determine who we are going to be. I think we tend to picture life as a race. And in this race, it is easy to want to be ahead. People will do whatever it takes to beat the person behind them. And I think sometimes in the process of focusing so much on winning we forget to remember how we want to finish and who we want to finish with. When that race is over, does getting first place necessarily mean you really won? When you’re standing at the finish line, who’s standing with you, and how are they looking at you?
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