(Photo by Hazel King)Do you ever feel that you don’t fit in…that you’re not like everybody else? Probably everyone has felt like that at one time or another. We all tend to want to blend in, to be inconspicuous if not invisible. Maybe it’s because we think if we’re different, that makes us somehow wrong. Maybe everyone else is in on the secret of how to be cool and we’re still clueless, the dork without a date, the nerd without a notion of his future extreme coolness. So we try to hide in the crowd hoping no one will notice how totally uncool we are.
Wait a minute. Maybe God made us different for a reason…not to stick out, but to stand out. Look at today’s photograph. Notice how your eye is drawn to the single yellow mum rather than the abundance of orange pumpkins surrounding it. The pumpkins are large and orange and they clamor for attention. The mum sits in the midst like a yellow beacon in a sea of orange. Is that what God expects of us? To be who we are and just let our light shine?
In a few weeks, many of these pumpkins will be carved into jack-o’-lanterns and candles placed inside. The pumpkin has no light of its own. The pumpkin-carver must provide the light. Neither can we provide our own light. It is God who places his light inside us. Our job is just to let it shine.
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is— his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2, NIV).
Prayer: God, grant that we may not wish to be like others, but give us the desire to be like you. Amen.
--Hazel King
Copyright 2008
Boy, this hit right on in my life. I always felt different. Not quit in sync with everyone else. I didn't know it was a blessing. We never do, until we grow. I hope we can teach this to our children.
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