I am laughing out loud right now - seriously. Not just like when you type LOL in a text but you're not really. No, I am literally LOL. Why you may ask (or you may not?) I started a blog here about feeling "drab" because I read something I wrote months ago about feeling and looking schleppy and I thought it was clever and funny. Perfect, I thought. I can just copy,paste add a few minor modifications and I will have another blog post. Ha, two in a week. That's great. So, as I'm making my minor changes so the post will appear as though I just thought this up between school and making dinner today, my computer goes crazy. F's just start appearing on the page and it starts making this horrible humming noise. All I can do is exit without saving. Did I stop and take notice here? No, of course not. I went right back to my word doc, tried to copy again and the same thing happened. This is when I took pause.
To have published that post would have been inauthentic. I am, in fact, not feeling drab (no matter how schleppy I look today.) I did not, another point of fact, just write that in some sudden burst of clever inspiration. I am struck here by a truth: If anything, shouldn't we strive to be authentic? To be anything less would be a lie. So, thank you God for stopping me from being disingenuous and prompting me to be honest.
I read Matthew 21 a few days ago and it left me pondering a few things. You know the story: Jesus enters the temple and rebukes them for turning a house of prayer into a market place and he throws them out. This resonated with me profoundly. As a commentary on consumerism, I am guilty of turning the temple into a marketplace. Here's what I mean: I should have a healthy active spiritual life , one that is demonstrated in the temple God gave me, namely my body. That is, my mind should be actively engaged in prayer, in conversations with God. My lips should be proclaiming the gospel and praising my heavenly father. My ears should be filters for what is good and pleasing so that I can hear and meditate on those things that are pure, noble, and just. My body should be used for service to the glory of my Father. But, if I am in fact worshipping at the feet of "more", I have pushed God out of my temple and it has become just another (market)place for stuff.
What sort of stuff? The stuff that keeps me up night, a.k.a. worry. Was I good mom today? Do my kids love Jesus? Do my babies know they are loved? Did I love and respect my husband the way he deserves or did I, as I often do, nag at him and complain about tiny, significant details? The thing that often worries me most is that I spent too much time thinking about me and my life instead of keeping my focus on Jesus and serving others. Which, when analyzed is certifiable because I'm worrying about me worrying about me too much...are you tracking 'cause I know my head hurts...
But, there's other stuff too, namely Shiny Object Syndrome (S.O.S.) We are inundated with what I recently heard termed "hyper-reality." This is the reality created on tv, in reality-television, on commercials, in magazines. It is what I now think of as the air-brushed version of reality. It tries to paint a picture of what life could be like if only....if only I had the right car, the right house, the right body, the right job, the right fill in the blank. Reality isn't good enough for us anymore, we want a version of it that is a little more perfect and in fact, isn't real or attainable at all. But here's the kicker: just as soon as we settle on the version of reality we think we want and we make that our goal and create "dream boards" to stare back at us everyday as reminders that what we have right now isn't at all satisfying, another, better, shinier version of reality is proposed and that becomes our new obsession. This is the stuff that crowds our temple, ideas we try to sell ourselves, that ends up taking up to much real estate in our minds and leaves no room for Christ.
So, I'm sending up my S.O.S. to Jesus. I'm laying it in the shadow of the cross and leaving it there because I know He is the only one that can truly satisfy and save. Matthew 6:33 is my favorite verse, my life verse. But if I'm honest, I've not been applying it to my life. So, here is my challenge: to really focus on His kingdom and His righteousness and know that all these things shall be added unto me as well. I need not worry, I need not lust after a better version of me or my life. He has heard my S.O.S., I am rescued and that, my friend, is the best of all realities.
In His Service,
