Out of the mouths of babes

Zane's quote of the day: "It's my spirit that's making me laugh, I don't know why, but it's been making me laugh all day! " He said this while Hannah was helping him with his school work.

Margins

I took a class at VU entitled "Strangers and Marginals". The focus was individuals who were or would have been seen as weird, bizzare, or strange or crazy by the society on the whole. What intrigued me was that many of these individuals accomplished unique,original deeds but were misunderstood in their lifetime, made to suffer and were cast out emotionally and or physically. Some were gifted artists, musicians, poets, inventors, and authors. Some never came to fame, and spent their lives in solitude in the hills avoiding the towns. Some went mad. Some were put to death because their ideas were threatening. All of this stuck in my processing as I live my life and I find myself looking for and respecting the unique giftings of the people I meet.I really don't expect people to think like me or have the same interests. I enjoy finding common ground or newly discovering something through someone elses areas of interest. I am disturbed by how quickly a non homogenous person is subtley put aside or corrected. How many sensitive souls, gifted in ways they don' t have the confidence to push through, are out there. I watch my own children and am trying to cautiously fan the flames in their areas of interest, let them know their ideas are original to them even if I've heard others express them.
Margins, seem to me to be the unplanned space. We do our thinking and planning and writing of our lives, I like to think the margins are where God's creativity comes in , His planning( of course He has already written His book)His fitting of the puzzle pieces, my seeing His sovereignty at work, His working through the multitudes or individuals to carry out specific connections between people, just the right people, the one who can comfort another, the one who can be strong for another, the specific one who can reach out a hand to lift another up or share a word so another chooses to believe one more day can be good.The margins are where we trust and seek Jesus to reveal to us the 'good deeds He planned in advance for us to walk in"Not just anything I can think of that is good to do, but what He created me to do that is somehow meant to specifically help a specific person. My brain starts to cramp when I even for a minute try to think about how my life interconnects with others which interconnect with others. I remember when my niece asked my sister what focus of ministry (how she worded it I 'm not sure) she should have, as she was newly involved with highschool, Cindy said , the gist of which was, just be yourself, do what interests you, be your own person. This has become more profound to me over the years because it reveals inherent respect for what God put in a person when He created that unique individual . He made that person in a beautiful mix of colors, talents, interests and so on. It sounds too simple and like the worst cliche, but" be yourself" is actually way, way important. As I hear myself saying it to my kids, I know I'll add, 'submit yourself to Jesus, He knows what the work of art is meant to look like....be yourself in light of Him.
This mysteriously,abstract, in-the-image-of-God,creative potential of every human is,I know, what is at the heart of what I find so gut wrenchingly sad about death, a halting end to what God is doing through that person on earth, whether that person has lived a long life or his life had just begun in that "safest place on earth"(unless that mama lives in America).