October 5, 2009
Scripture Reading
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
- Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)
Thought of the Day
You might not know this about me, but I am somewhat of a renaissance man. After I typed this I decided that I better look up the definition of renaissance man. The American Heritage dictionary defines it as this: A man who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences. On second thought I may not be a renaissance man. I guess that going to the theater every few years does not a renaissance man make. I will be honest with you. Over the years, I periodically take my sweet wife and sometimes my family to plays or musicals. I always enjoy them for the most part, but I will admit that I normally doze a bit during the first act. I always go get something to drink at halftime, or intermission as the theater crowd calls it. I pretty much stay awake in the second half because my theory is that plays and musicals are much like NBA basketball games and football games; that is, that the real action happens towards the end.
Anyway, in August the fam and I were in New York to take my son to law school up there and we went to the play, Wicked. In case you are out of the Broadway show loop, Wicked, the musical is based on Gregory Maguire's novel, Wicked - The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The musical is considered a back story to the Wizard of Oz.
So we went and the play started. I did fall asleep for just a while in the first act. (I am a creature of habit.) I did go get a diet coke at halftime. I began to get into the musical more in the second act. There was a scene towards the end of the musical which really grabbed me. (I told you that is when things happen.)
It is a scene where Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West is saying goodbye to her friend, Glinda, the good witch. Glinda tells Elphaba, "I am who I am today because I knew you". Elphaba replies to Glinda, "So much of me is made of what I learned from you". Of course this is a musical, so they are singing these lines. They finally sing together to each other these words. "Because I knew you I have been changed for good."
When I heard these words guess what I thought about. These are words that we need to say or sing to Christ Jesus. Don't we all want to be able to say to Jesus, "I am who I am today, because I know you". And also, to say, "so much of me is made of what I learned from you". And of course, to sing to Him, "because I know you, I have been changed for good". I love the theater.
Prayer
Lord, You make me who I am today. I am changed. Amen.
