World

It's been too long since I've really looked at the stars.  Life has gotten busy.  I have joined the hustle and bustle of the real world and have experienced a dramatic shift in my daily thoughts.  I've been focusing on trivialities.  I wish it wasn't such a tightrope walk to keep your focus on what matters.  I wish I wasn't so easily distracted. 

I'm the kind of person that likes to feel like I'm accomplishing something.  But it's becoming exceedingly harder to feel that way.  A younger version of myself would probably be very proud of where I am today - but with increased knowledge comes a brooding sensation that I'm really not accomplishing much of anything.  There are just so many people in the world.  And every time I go out there, I'm deluged with marketing and ads, with road-raging drivers and egocentric shoppers.  We've established a culture of selfishness and it's eating us from the inside out. 

So I walk around weighed down by the wrongness of it all, and speak up when I can.  I have this amazing opportunity to teach from the scriptures to a group of Middle and High schoolers, but the Good News isn't easily glossed-up or marketable.  It's a hard word and it's so often watered down by churches today.  We appeal to the masses because we've been trained to think numbers matter.  I wish I knew where the line was.  I wish I could understand how Jesus and 12 strangers changed the world. 

There's this underlying attitude I see Jesus have towards people in the scriptures.  At every turn, he's willing to forgive people of their mistakes.  He helps them move beyond their labels and mistakes and look forward to being a new person - a new creation.  But when people hesitated, he had no patience for them.  Get with the program or get out.  If someone didn't follow him, it didn't seem to faze him.  He invested in those who cared and dismissed those who didn't.  Odd, right?  The early church worked this way as well.  If you wanted to be a Christian, you were welcomed into this radical new kind of community.  But if you got into a dispute with someone and refused to act according to the values of these people, you essentially could get kicked out of the club and would be treated like an outsider again. (Which happens to be an open arms policy). 

I wish the early church still existed today.  I wish it could have a chance to blossom again without being labeled a socialist movement or radical heretics.  I think trying to make the world a better place is easier when you're doing it with the people you love.  It doesn't matter how many times you fail - you've always got your friends there to pick you up.  What happened to radical loyalty?  What happened to love?