So not cool

My parents never let me watch the Simpsons when I was in middle school, and by the time I got to high school, I didn't really care too much. In high school, you spend so much time and energy outside of the house with your friends, jobs, and extracurriculars, you don't care as much about what you can and can not watch. Well, at least I didn't. I cared more about where I was and was not allowed to go! So today, when I was telling a gentleman at AT&T where our new residence would be, he said, "Spring Hill? You mean, like the Simpsons?" And I fumbled around and tried to imagine that I knew what on earth he was talking about. "Excuse me?" "uh, you know. The Simpsons. Bart. Homer..."And then I just had to admit that, "You know, I know this is weird, but I never really watched the Simpsons growing up." I felt like the uncool kid. I was the uncool kid way back! I had the glasses, the hair, the sweater that had a puffy animal head on the front and the puffy tail on the back, the polka dotted top to match a different polka dotted bottom. "Hey, polka dots are polka dots, right?" I was that girl. But I studied hard and was loyal to my friends and loved Jesus, and I made some sweet memories. It's good to be a kid. And it's good to grow up.

Today, I was thinking about how God uses the strangest things to grow our love for Him. He describes trials as a purification process, like the gilding of metal. Who would have known that fire causes metal to be purer and stronger? Fire tears things down and causes destruction to almost everything, but to metals, we see them strengthen and molded to the craftman's desired shape. I love that!

And it's okay to be so not cool today. We can love richly even when we receive little praise or recognition because Jesus proclaims our worth. We can give freely, even when we don't have pennies to our name, because, as Grace now says, "Everything we have belongs to God". And we can breathe without the weight of the world on our chest, even in dire circumstances, because God made a way for us to be free from the ultimate weight of death that we are all due and very much deserve. So, rejoicing in trial might not seem like the "cool" thing to do. But I actually think it's kinda fun, and I think the Lord rejoices with us!



Well, as is typical for me, a crying baby will shorten the length of this post. But I'll leave you with this, because His word is so sweet.

Romans 20: 2-5
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

*Edited. I just realized there is no Romans 20. It's actually from chapter 5, same verses.

That's totally embarassing

and

So not cool...