I'm SOOOO Bored!

“I’m bored.” I can’t tell you how often I hear these words from my kids and see it posted on their walls and hear it in their tweets. It can be less than 24 hours into summer break and they are bored. Maybe I was the same at their age...I can’t really remember. If I was the same, is it something we outgrow or when exactly did I change? I can’t remember a recent time when I was truly bored, especially to the point of complaining about it.

Maybe I am too busy to be bored. Although not as hectic as many I know, my schedule moves along at a pretty good clip. And when I do get down time, I am more than happy to read a good book, play a game on the internet, watch a movie, or simply think or pray. So possibly I don’t have the time to get bored.

Maybe I’m just weird and I’m okay with being alone in my thoughts. I don’t need to have friends around me all the time. Many a personality test have told me that I am an introvert...I get more energy from being alone than I do from surrounding myself with people.

Maybe it is a generational thing. Our kids have grown up with non-stop stimulation. Media, cell phones, computers. They have learned how to multi-task in ways that amaze me! When those things slow down or become silent, they don’t know what to do. I can’t believe I have raised 3 girls who won’t read a book unless they absolutely have to!

So all of this to say I often feel helpless in helping my kids “solve” their boredom issue. I can make suggestions until the cows come home, but nothing appeals to them.

What was the point of this blog?? Not sure.....just thinking. (all alone, but not bored!)

Happy Holidays...and other Christmas reflections.

I’ve been thinking about Christmas a bunch lately. Here are a few of my thoughts.

My friend Shannon recently posted on Facebook about Christians who get all worked up when people replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays.” I have always inwardly cringed at the people who proclaim “Keep the Christ in Christmas,” and “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but I wasn’t always sure why. Shannon stated this so well, it is easier for me to just copy and paste her thoughts:

“Hey Christians involved in the great "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate, please stop it. The Christmas season gives us an opportunity to love people. Christ didn't come to earth to give us a holiday. He came to teach us how to love (dare I say love people who don't celebrate Christmas). And ultimately, to die for our sin (like the sin that causes us to argue about words like Christmas and Holidays). Please don't miss the opportunity to love people this Christmas. That's something that Jesus actually cared about.”

It just seems almost hypocritical to me. Why must these people supposedly fight for Jesus in this one situation, yet hardly give Him a second thought the other 11 months of the year?

This brings me to my next big thought. I don’t recall any place in the Bible that we are told to remember and celebrate annually our savior’s birthday. Communion -- definitely commanded. But a big birthday party every year that is often loosely (at best) connected to a baby in a manger? Let alone, how many people truly grasp what Jesus becoming a human really means? Do people really think that God’s intention was that we choose an arbitrary date on the calendar and each year we chop down trees and drag them into our houses, put hundreds of lights all over our houses, eat twice as much food as we need to, and spend BILLIONS of dollars that most of us can’t afford on giving gifts to people who really don’t need anything? Sometimes I just look around at it all and try to see it through God’s eyes. It really gives you a different perspective, and it is a sad one in my opinion.

Please don’t view me as just another Ebenezer Scrooge. I have lots of great Christmas memories both as a child and then with my own children. There are parts of Christmas that I still look forward to. But each year I seem to find myself stepping outside of all the merriment a little further and thinking about all of it and what it has become in our society.

In response, I try my hardest to keep my personal focus on what it means that God put skin on and came to earth in anticipation of me some day being born and needing to be rescued from my sin so that I could spend forever with Him. THAT is why I celebrate.

Bring on a burden!

It seems that so many of our prayers are requests for our lives to be easier. Prayers for material things, prayers for better jobs, prayers for our health, prayers for people in our life to be happy. Basically we want to make our little corner of the world as comfortable as we possibly can. I’m not going to get into whether these are the things we should be praying for today, although I have an opinion. My point is actually to consider praying for something entirely different. I was really challenged with this thought when I read Craig Groeschel’s book Weird.

I have begun praying for a burden. Not like so many prayers I have had in the past to have God remove some kind of burden. Instead, I am asking him to give me a burden! How crazy is that??

Here is what my man Craig says...

“Most of us feel good when we avoid burdens, after all isn’t life hard enough? Why ask God for more trials, trauma, and tears? It’s normal to want to avoid pain - human even. But God didn’t put us here on earth just to feel good and enjoy ourselves. He doesn’t give us our lives so we can master techniques in avoiding pain. He puts us here to make an eternal difference. He puts us here to show everyone around us how much he loves them. He puts us here to be his hands and feet, his body and his heart.”

He then goes on to have you ponder some questions. What breaks your heart? What makes you angry? What do you care about more than most people?

I care that people don’t know God and will eventually be eternally separated from Him. But “care” is not always enough to drive me to action. To the questions above... I am praying that my heart is broken for people who are not saved. I want to get fired up that people don’t know the truth and no one is telling them! And I want to care SO, SO deeply that I have no choice but to respond and take action.

Basically I want to tip the scales. On one side is my absolute faith and knowledge that God is real and awesome and Jesus is the only way to God. On the other side of the scale are all my fears and insecurites...the parts of me that stay quiet because people might think less of me if I share my faith. Too often the scales lean the wrong direction and my weaknesses win out. But I believe that through prayer and an ever increasing love for God, the scales will pull the other direction. I think a burden will be the difference.

I want to see people the way God sees them. With such love that I can’t bear the thought of them going through this life as an enemy of God, and eventually eternity in hell. I can say that I agree with these words, but maybe if I truly believed them and had an actual burden, I would get out there, open my mouth, and just maybe make a difference.