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So today I celebrated one of my favorite holidays, Cheap Candy Day at
Wal-Mart. For those of you that don't know, all the leftover candy from
Valentine's Day is cheaper the day after. So as I commemorated this
momentous occasion by wondering if I wanted to have candy for
breakfast, I started to reminisce about how awkward Valentine's Day
used to be. Remember how it went, your grade school teacher would send you home with a note about bringing a brown paper bag to be covered with pink hearts and red arrows. Then your mom would help you pick out the perfect box of cartoon decorated generic Valentines and stand over your shoulder while you scribbled your name over and over again on random Valentines for the kids on the other side of the classroom that you hadn't talked to since . . . well, that you had never talked to because they were always on the other side of everything because their last name started with W. Then at the appointed time, everyone got up a placed one Valentine in every other student's bag. The whole affair was just awkward. First, it bugged me that I had to give everyone a Valentine. The truth
is I didn't like everyone in my classes. That kid that stole my lunch
money every day, forget that joker! I won't lie to you, I don't hope
you have a happy Valentine's Day. I hope all your candy hearts taste
like chalk. Or the awkward girl that you knew had a crush on you and
she was just looking for a glimmer of hope that you might like her back. Remember how she would run around the classroom trying to decipher clues about the way you signed her card compared to everyone else's, all the while glancing in your direction, hoping to make eye contact. But the most tense moment of all was trying to find the one card that mattered from the girl you had a crush on since the first day of school. You try to keep your cool on the outside, but on the inside you want to flip the bag in panic and throw away the other cards just to read hers. And when you find it, your world is different. All the other cards are pink and red noise on shiny paper, but hers is different. Her card makes you feel like a man. Her card makes you feel like you can jump over Mt. Kilimanjaro. It makes you feel like you can actually beat up the kid who steals your lunch money every day. It makes you feel like you can pass your spelling test. Her card is just different, Sure it was made by some random guy, eating a Subway sandwich in a cubicle from a template, but some how her card runs deeper. The words ring truer. The phrase "BE MINE" burns more brightly in your memory than anything you have ever heard or seen in your life. It is as if the graphic designer sat down with your crush and heard her heart and designed this card as her special message to you. The truth is I couldn't have cared less about the cards from the other twenty two crumb snatchers in the room, but her card made all the difference.
That's the Gospel to me. When I read it, my world is different. This life is full of words, but all the criticism and adulation is noise compared to the words God speaks to me. I know the message on the pages of everyone's Bible is the same, but when I read Ephesians 3.20, and He says, "God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or
guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us
around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within
us. (The Message)"- it is as if He sat down with the apostle Paul and said write this for Mike. When I hear his words, I feel like a new man. Like I can climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, or stand up to life and the bullies of my soul and win, or pass every test that this daily routine throws at me. My life is different when I read God's words. So I challenge you. Don't read God's Word as if it were just another card stuffed in the bottom of the brown paper bag, mixed in with all the other white noise of life. Make it more than another negligible ornament in this awkward occasion we call Christianity. Read as if you are searching for God's specific message to you. I promise you will find it and it will make all the difference. Happy Cheap Candy Day.
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