This is what I get? Really?

All I needed was to go to the bathroom, and what do I get? Really? Is that whole entire roll of toilet tissue honestly sitting in the public Kroger toilet? It was obviouse that someone did this on purpose. The seat was up so that the large 12" or so wide roll could be placed in the toilet to soak and get nasty. The plastic tissue dispencer was pried open. 

Outside the single stall bathroom I met two Girl Scouts coming out of the bathroom. I looked at them and asked if it was vacant (I also thought it was strange for the two girls to come out together...as the bathroom has only one toilet). The younger of the two said that it was and so I went in. And there it was. I couldn't help but feel upset that someone (possibly these girls) would do something like that to me. I immediately started personalizing the situation. 

I guess I feel entitled. I feel like everyone should like me, and why wouldn't they? Right? Aren't I special? Don't I deserve better? Can't I be the one that everyone seems to adore? What's up with that look that woman gave me? Why did he just honk his horn at me? Why did that little girl tell me a lie?

Wow, this world is just so messed up isn't it?! No one seems to notice or care about me.

You know...that's okay! God has been working in my heart recently showing me these thoughts and feelings. He has been challenging me to think about things other than myself. I honestly don't deserve for anyone to like me. I don't even deserve to walk into a restroom that is to my liking! I have to always be reminding myself that this world isn't for me. Yes, I live here, but I am an alien here. I have a home waiting for me. I have a place where I will no longer feel estranged. Here on earth I am a servant and ambassador of Christ, nothing more and nothing less. What more could I ask for?

The Great Distraction

My church is going through a study called "Behold Your God". It has been really good so far. There have been a few things that really strike me. One of which raises the question how much Christians care about the person and character of Christ. How much do we study and seek to know the one we are trying to imitate? How often do we find it easier to talk about God and then we seem to get bashful when we start talking about Christ. Or maybe we find it easy to study Gods love, His holiness and all those attributes and somehow we clam up when it is time to study the person of Jesus Christ. Don't you feel this in your heart? Don't you have this odd feeling as if it has to be boring to study Jesus? 

I am ashamed to admit it, but I feel a twinge of this. I've got to ask myself how I can possibly be this way. How can I not want to study and know the one I claim to be following?

It's almost like me wanting all the good things that my husband can give me like his love, his protection, his provision, and his conversation, and me saying, "But I don't want you." Where really, I feel about him that all I want is him. I don't care if we have to go live in a shack, I want to be with him because I love him and I want him. All the stuff he brings with him is good and all, but it isn't what makes me like him so much. Shouldn't God be this way to us? Shouldn't Jesus be the one that we are so enthralled with? Shouldn't we long for him instead of what he can give us?

I feel like this nation is full of Christians who are named after a man they don't really know and don't really have a desire to know. They can watch Christian movies and read Christian romance novels, but they can't sit down and study scripture to figure out who this person they say they live for is. 

How many Christians do you know that have an obsession with their Creator? How many believers have you seen who are so distracted with Christ that the world is not their top priority? How many people who say they walk the narrow way actually do what is unnatural to the flesh and deny themselves the distractions of the world?

These questions are hard and they prick my heart because I realize how much I am unlike every one of these people. I see how distracted I am by everything around me. Somehow I have let The Greatest Prize fall to the bottom of my list. I have not made Him my Great Distraction when He should be. 

I am ever learning and ever posing these questions to myself and to the ones who need to hear them. Please do not hear judgment in my tone, but listen to a heart that beaks for those who don't have the truth and who don't have a grasp on The Greatest Prize. Christ is the one who should distract us. He is the one we should be allowing to infiltrate every part of our lives.