Idols

Good morning, dear readers.  This morning I woke up at 5am with some gunk in my throat.  I ended up not being able to get back to sleep, so my brain has been spinning for a good 3 hours now.  The kids are off to school, and the house is quiet.

I've been wondering, who is it that you idolize in your life?  Is there anybody worthy of such a distinction?  Because it seems like our society is so desperate to have somebody to look up to, that they will gravitate towards the first person that catches their attention.  There are people in this world that I admire, for sure, and I do believe my reasons for looking up to these people are valid.  I tend to admire the people whose hearts are the most open, whose lives are testaments to the Spirit of God living inside of them.  The people who do good in the world and who inspire others to do the same, not by shaming them or making them feel bad, but by showing them what it means to be a person of faith, a person with values, a person who knows the true meaning of what it means to be holy.  But even those people are human and will make mistakes.  There is nobody on the planet who succeeds are being perfectly holy 100% of the time.  That's why we need Jesus.

Recently a friend of mine suggested that even Jesus wasn't perfect.  And that makes my head spin a little bit, makes me want to dig into my faith just a little deeper.  Because we believe that Jesus was fully human, but that he was the son of God.  He was sent to show us how to live.  I look at the way Jesus got angry sometimes, how he questioned God's will for him, how he spoke out against evil with boldness and truth.  Jesus was anything but a passive witness to the Gospel!  I want to do more, when I consider all that Jesus is and represents for us as Christians.  And there have been countless others since him--Mother Theresa, JPII, so many saints--who weren't perfect but who were certainly Divinely inspired.  And maybe that is what we should strive for.  

In my personal life, I have always favored the underdog.  Maybe it is because I have a bit of an underdog story myself, though people look at me and think I have everything.  And I probably do, compared to some.  I've always been a quick learner, I have natural skills and talents, and I am generally pretty healthy.  But I have to work hard like everybody else.  My grandpa paid for my piano lessons when I was a kid but it was up to me to practice, to put in the time, to make something of my experience.  Nobody handed that to me.  And I don't have a solid family background like a lot of people.  I can't really ask my family members for advice.  I have to figure out life on my own.  Again, I'm glad for my faith.  I do my best to live as God would want me to live.  But I'm going to mess things up.  We all are.  Hopefully at the end of the day, our God remains our one true idol--the one who we know will never leave us or forsake us.  The one who will love us unconditionally through all of our gunk. 

Something to chew on, eh?  Until next time.