I'm almost through the hoilday season, and I'm happy to say that I've survived with relatively few battlescars and that I dont think I've gained TOO much weight!
Christmas was wonderful! I got a lot of nice gifts and I got to spend time with my family, which ranks high on my list of favorite things to do. I can't help but feel guilty though. I'd be the first one to say that we need to "keep Christ in Christmas", but I have to admit that I love the commercialism of the Holidays. I haven't had a lot of Christmas spirit the past few years. I dont know... I think it's just a part of growing up. Reguardless of my old age, I had a pretty great Christmas.
There are only two days left of 2010. It's hard to believe that another year has gone by! It has been a pretty good year though! I made it halfway through my undergraduate career, said goodbye to my teenage years, and sold my soul to the devil, otherwise known as Walmart.
Every year I make a dozen New Years Resolutions, and stick to none. This year, I think that my only Resolution will be that I try my best at life. I know what my weaknesses are, and I know that I can't entirely fix any of them, but I can make an effort to grow and mature.
I think it will be another good year. :-)
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
I would love to say that I'm a pretty altrusitic person, that I do things for others because it is the right thing to do and not for my own personal gain. But that would be a lie.
At the beginning of this semester, I had a conversation with one of my best friends about selfishness. We concluded that everything we do is for our own good, and that even our attempts to "Be like Jesus" are because we want the potential benifits of having the Son of God in our corner. I kind of forgot about this conversation... until recently.
Let me start off by saying that I am, at best, a lukewarm Christian. I'm not proud of it, and I feel like I'm constantly struggling to call myself a Christian at all. A while ago I went through a period where I was just depressed. Everything seemed like it was going wrong, I was sick, people were fighting, and I just wanted to lay in bed all day. I had heard people talk about how God had "Broken" them, but this was the first time I had every truly experienced it. I couldn't stop the chaos going on in my life, I couldn't heal my sickness, so I just opened my Bible, in hopes that God would provide me with some of the answers that I needed to pull myself back together.
I guess you could say I've learned a lot the past couple of weeks. I've asked God to show me the places in my life that I could improve and the relationships that I need to fix. One thing in particular that I have been confronted with is my own selfishness.
In high school, I was voted "Most Helpful" by my senior class. To most, this would indicate that I did things for others, but in all auctuality, most of the things I did, and still do for others, benifit my self esteem more than anything. I feel so much better about myself and my circumstances when I do things for others, which isn't entirely bad until they fail to reciprocate my generocity.
I've been in a lot of relationships where I've felt like I have dedicated my time and energy to someone who just would never do the same for me. I felt justified in my bitterness until yesterday, when I read Romans 5:6-8:
When we were unable to help ourselves, at the moment of our need, Christ died for us although we were living against God. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die. But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.
That really made me think... I'm supposed to follow Christ... to BE LIKE Christ. Christ didn't die for me because it made him feel better about himself. He didn't die for me because I do so much for him. He died for me because, even though I I mess up, and intentionally sin... He loves me.
There is nothing that we can do to earn any more of this love, and nothing that we can do to lose it. This is how we should base our interactions with others.
Altrusim is a charactaristic that is so hard to have without unconditional love, and while Jesus is the only one who has perfected this kind of selflessness, I'm going to make it my goal to love others the best that I can, reguardless of how much they can love me.
At the beginning of this semester, I had a conversation with one of my best friends about selfishness. We concluded that everything we do is for our own good, and that even our attempts to "Be like Jesus" are because we want the potential benifits of having the Son of God in our corner. I kind of forgot about this conversation... until recently.
Let me start off by saying that I am, at best, a lukewarm Christian. I'm not proud of it, and I feel like I'm constantly struggling to call myself a Christian at all. A while ago I went through a period where I was just depressed. Everything seemed like it was going wrong, I was sick, people were fighting, and I just wanted to lay in bed all day. I had heard people talk about how God had "Broken" them, but this was the first time I had every truly experienced it. I couldn't stop the chaos going on in my life, I couldn't heal my sickness, so I just opened my Bible, in hopes that God would provide me with some of the answers that I needed to pull myself back together.
I guess you could say I've learned a lot the past couple of weeks. I've asked God to show me the places in my life that I could improve and the relationships that I need to fix. One thing in particular that I have been confronted with is my own selfishness.
In high school, I was voted "Most Helpful" by my senior class. To most, this would indicate that I did things for others, but in all auctuality, most of the things I did, and still do for others, benifit my self esteem more than anything. I feel so much better about myself and my circumstances when I do things for others, which isn't entirely bad until they fail to reciprocate my generocity.
I've been in a lot of relationships where I've felt like I have dedicated my time and energy to someone who just would never do the same for me. I felt justified in my bitterness until yesterday, when I read Romans 5:6-8:
When we were unable to help ourselves, at the moment of our need, Christ died for us although we were living against God. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die. But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.
That really made me think... I'm supposed to follow Christ... to BE LIKE Christ. Christ didn't die for me because it made him feel better about himself. He didn't die for me because I do so much for him. He died for me because, even though I I mess up, and intentionally sin... He loves me.
There is nothing that we can do to earn any more of this love, and nothing that we can do to lose it. This is how we should base our interactions with others.
Altrusim is a charactaristic that is so hard to have without unconditional love, and while Jesus is the only one who has perfected this kind of selflessness, I'm going to make it my goal to love others the best that I can, reguardless of how much they can love me.
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