the sky is sinking blue...

Have you ever noticed how fast life changes. I feel like it was just yesterday that I was moving into my dorm-room for freshman year, and now here I am at 21, light years away from anything that sort of resembles the "normal" that used to dictated my daily activities only three years ago.

What is normal though? Is it a state of being, is it a feeling that you have deep inside of you that everything is going to go one way, or is it simply the idea that things are monotonous, and have no value other than to get you from birth to death? Is normal the kid from the suburbs who has everything, or is it the kid on the street who struggles to keep himself fed? I know that normal is something that I have struggled with the last six months. Wanting to get back to that place, and finally settling on the realization that normal is irrelevant. We can not state a "normal" for people, and even if we did define the term, then there would still be people that were not normal.

And where does God fit into this idea of normal? Is God normal, are people who follow him normal? If you want my honest opinion, then I would have to say that Christians are not normal, and that is because they are not called to be, they are called to be out there. I think that it is a sad state that we are in that Christians want to be "normal." It is the very thing we are told to not be. We are called to be countercultural. We are supposed to intermix and show people change and difference. We are supposed to show them light, so why do we stayed locked up in our huge buildings in the suburbs and why don't we break this down, and intermix, in small groups, like a wildfire, why don't we spread?

Why can't we help to redefine christianity as out there, not normal, as people who love to shake things up and to show people love and compassion, something that is not normal for the world we live in. Compassion is not normal, neither is love, in a world where the word love has been shrunk down into a feeling, something that you can fall in and out of, why are people not learning to choose to love, to decide that even though you can't feel that feeling anymore, you have an obligation to love, and to know that people need love.

All of this to say, I don't know what normal is, but I sure don't fall into it. I don't come anywhere close! I live in a family whose situation has been defined by unfortunate events in the last year, and we still laugh, and have fun and feel joy. We are not normal. Because normal is a irrelevant term, and it is something that time changes always.

lovelovelove a.