Be Nice

I'm re-reading a book I loved last summer... "Desire" by John Eldredge.

When I turned to page 53 and saw a section titled "Blessed Are the Nice" I knew I was going to be challenged.

I am nice.

I don't break rules.

I don't get angry often.

I always say "yes."

I want you to like me and never get upset with me.

I don't stray very far from the set path. {Literally}.

It took me months before I gained the courage to walk on the grass at JBU.

But, am I supposed to be nice? Or is nice just another form of apathetic?

Eldredge says, "We are producing a generation of men and women whose greatest virtue is that they don't offend anyone"

I don't know, Jesus was pretty offensive to His culture...

"But the diction used by Christ is quite gigantesque, it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea"--GK Chesterton

I really don't know...I'm just beginning to wrestle with the idea, and these are my thoughts.

twenty.

Yesterday was my 20th birthday.

And there were so many firsts...

I woke up at 6AM and went to bed well after midnight, just to make the most of it.

I went to two of my favorite shopping places. And didn't shop.

I ate more food than I have eaten in the last week, complete with 2 free desserts.

I received my favorite flowers. For the first time. No one else has ever thought to ask.

I was sung to, in that embarrassing way, for the first time in a restaurant.

I didn't plan very much, but it ended up being for the best.

For the first time, I felt older on my birthday.

I was thinking, I'm pretty much 1/4 of the way done with my life.

And that scares me.

I need to start making more of a difference, living with more purpose.

I feel like God gave me this verse::

"We will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ"--Ephesians 4:14

Some of my biggest, more regretted mistakes were made as a result of believing lies.

I will not be influenced by them any longer.

I will speak the truth and the words God gives me.

I desire to grow to be more and more like Christ.