God in the Bad Days

  Today was a horrible day for me. Sometimes you just have those days where it feels like everything that could go wrong did go wrong and it takes two hands to count how many emotional breakdowns you’ve had. I couldn’t even bake brownies right today (which are usually my specialty). So as I finish up the day I am feeling worn out, tired, exhausted, and like a complete and utter failure.


   As I had tried to write a post about something totally different and I just got frustrated with even that, I took a look at a bunch of Leslie Ludy quotes that I had typed out in a document and one of them particularly struck me.

    “While American Christians are preoccupied with healing their own inner wounds, being set free to be their true selves, and fighting to be noticed and appreciated for their own unique qualities; staggering numbers of people around the world are living in such misery, squalor, and pain that we cannot even imagine.”

Now doesn't that put everything into perspective? Also another thing she said just totally hit me hard.

     “Our hearts are not the most important things in the world. The Down syndrome boy in Mexico City who sleeps on the streets and begs for food is the most important thing in the world. The nine-year-old girl whose virginity is auctioned off to a room of despicable perverts is the most important thing in the world. The impoverished prostitute who lives in the gutter and sells her body for a few coins a day is the most important thing in the world. The African boy-solider who is forced to become a killing machine at the age of ten is the most important thing in the world.”

It always seems that when I am feeling the most down, the most caught up in self-pity, the most preoccupied with self, God just totally convicts me using powerful means. Here I am, having emotional breakdowns about a bad day when 2 million children can’t sleep tonight because they are being forced to sell their bodies for sex. I am whining and fussing while 146 million kids are orphans and millions of people are going to be hungry. Is that sick and twisted or what?

 We live in a world where we are encouraged to be consumed with ourselves. From billboards that advertise, “Get what you deserve” (just a side note: why in the world would I want to get hell? Because that is the only thing that I deserve.) To consumer driven churches, it’s everywhere. And it’s considered normal and that’s wrong.

 Our entire country is filled with the consumer mindset that says it’s all about us. We want things to go our way in our timing and no one better mess with that happening. That, my friends, is sinful. Because it’s not about us… nothing in life is about us.

The very purpose man was made was to glorify GOD. We were meant to make God look good and enjoy doing that! Yet instead of spending our time, energy, and money pouring ourselves into making God look good and serving Him and others, we pour our lives into ourselves. It’s an atrocity that everything seems to be made to be about ourselves in a world that doesn’t need people consumed with self, but consumed with God and the needs of others.

 Today, instead of pouring myself totally into my younger siblings who I was babysitting, I worried about me, my stress level, my feelings, my frustration, and today ended up horrible. Today, instead of making my focus the Cross and Christ, I made my focus myself, my burdens and responsibilities, my worries, and my situations. Instead of starting my day off in communion and fellowship with God, I woke up rushed, having slept past my alarm, and my first thoughts were all that I needed to get done.

        Yet through my failures and fallings, God still is with me. He promises that His grace is new every morning or as Miss Stacy would say “tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it… yet.” He remains faithful and promises that if I simply ask Him, He will give me everything I need. Because it’s not about me, it’s only about Him.