I Can't Take Back the

3.5 pages and 2 tests...

then a vast expanse of no-homeworkness will sprawl out before me.

and I will give a head nod to that expanse

and it will wave back at me and say, "Hello. welcome to your life. I've been waiting to meet you since the first day you stepped into that Kindergarten classroom at Mt. Olive Christian School in Athens."

I'll smile and offer up a snort of a laugh and say, "Sweet liberation." While I remember (with a grimace) that there was a chicken house next to Mt. Olive Christian School in Athens, and it smelled like chicken death and chicken booboo every day (which made going out to the playground for recess bittersweet to say the least).


These last 4.5 years of life that I've spent at Louisiana Tech have been very shaping for the play-dough that is my life.  I say "play-dough" instead of "clay" because clay is formed in shapes that are meant to harden, while play-dough is molded and then remolded throughout its lifetime.  Also, play-dough is salty.  Yes, I'm going to the Bible with this one.

This is an excerpt from an instance when Jesus was surrounded by a crowd, and in an attempt to spit some wisdom to his close disciples.  He retreats up a mountainside with his boys, and He just starts teaching them.  These particular nuggets of knowledge are called "The Beatitudes."  After, he finishes the Beatitudes is when I picture him maybe standing up with a really serious look, and like a coach giving a half-time speech. He looks his disciples in their eyes and says with a sense of urgency:  


"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."      Matthew 5:13

You might be reading this, and you grew up going to church with your parents.  Maybe you didn't go to church much, but you know what all this Bible stuff is generally about.  Maybe, you enjoyed going to church for awhile, and then it just became dull compared to other things that you could spend your time doing.  You might think that since you haven't been to church in awhile, you'd rather ignore spirituality because you'd rather do that than have to make changes and put in work to get your life right.  You don't want to be salty because being salty is a responsibility.  You don't want to put forth the effort to be salty.

To you I say this: I've been thrown out and trampled underfoot before.  I had lost my saltiness.  I didn't take seriously the responsibility I had to be salt and light to the world.

oh what? you think that sounds cheesy?  Ok, I'll deal with you and your cynicism in a moment.

So I was completely irrelevant as a disciple of Christ for a long while.  To be honest, being a disciple of Christ was not even a thought for me.  Why? Because I cared way more about me and what I was doing/saying/wearing/listening to/driving than I cared about other people and what God could have used me to do if I was paying attention to him.

So why was that so bad?

Because I treated some people really poorly, and I was a bad influence on several people.  Also, I came to realize that that long period of my life that I spent as a selfish punk, is time that I will never get back to do things for the Kingdom.

Once you begin to make a positive impact on the world, you get addicted to it.  At least, I have.  Please don't think that I'm being self-righteous here.  I have no grounds to be self-righteous because I didn't willingly become salty.  God shook the saltiness into me (like a salt shaker).  At least, he shook a bunch of the unsalty things out of my life.

It is such a picture of the grace that he came to give when he takes a person who is being selfish and uses them for the Kingdom.  I really didn't have a say in the matter when it happened to me.  He took me from death to life.

It's like He watched me be thrown out and trampled on, and finally He couldn't take it anymore so He snatched me up and used me to get some things done for Him.  That experience was so unbelievably fulfilling that I want more responsibility.  I am begging to have more responsibilities to further the Kingdom.


It's safe to say that I'm passionate about my God.  I think you would be too.

So now for you cynics of Christianity, and you people who read this and think condescending thoughts.

I don't give a rip about your cynicism and snarkiness.

I WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE OR TEMPER MY COMMENTS ABOUT MY FAITH IN ORDER TO KEEP YOU INTERESTED.


I encourage you to get up off the ground and stop being trampled on.