A Little Bit About Me

I've come to a great self-revelation. I know for some of you, you will quickly agree with my self-assessment, while for others of you, you will read this in a sense of denial saying it cannot be true. For the former, I apologize for my delay in coming to grips with the reality. For the latter, thank you for believing in me! What, pray tell, is this great mystery of myself? Are you ready? It's a big one, so beware. Read this self-disclosure at your own risk:

I am weird.

Not in the 'make your skin crawl' sense of the word. Not in the eccentricities of life, either. I mean in the fact that I have come to a greater realization about humanity: Normal is relative.

Therefore I am not normal, according to some one else's definition of normal. Another way of looking at this is that I am unique. Oh, that's more pleasant to the eyes, now isn't it? But the truth is that we are all unique. God has given each of us different abilities, skills, desires, goals, talents, resources and the list goes on. I am not like you; you are not like him; he is not like her and so on. God made you unique (or weird).

Why did he do this? Wouldn't life be simpler if everyone looked alike, talked alike, felt the same and acted the same? Maybe, but where would the excitement be in this Stepford world of unreality? And hypotheticals aside, we still live in the reality that we are all different.

The beauty of this self-discovery is that I understand my uniqueness (or weirdness) and that you understand your weir...I mean uniqueness as well. In fact we need to see the greater reality that we fit together like the pieces of a 6.72 billion piece jigsaw puzzle!

Just think about a few of these examples. In your marriage, you need your spouse to complete you. Genesis 2:24 says that the two become one, like puzzle pieces fitted perfectly together. So the next time your spouse seems a little, shall we say unique, remember they are the perfect match for your, um weirdness.

And what about your friends? Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says that a cord of three strands cannot be easily broken. It begins by saying two are better than one, but ends by saying that which is interwoven and intertwined creates a time enduring bond of friendship.

And what about the church? Paul reminds us that we are bonded together for perfect unity with a diversity of gifts:

"For as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body-so also is Christ. . . So the body is not one part but many. . . But now God has placed the parts, each one of them, in the body just as He wanted.

And if they were all the same part, where would the body be?

Now there are many parts, yet one body" ( 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, HCSB)

This means that the church without you is incomplete, lacking and not what God created it to be. I sometimes read this entire passage and chuckle wondering if I am an eye, a mouth or a little toe (or maybe even the toe nail on the little toe). However, the truth is that each of these are important to the body (remember how the little toe nail comes in handy when you forget where the coffee table is in a dark room in the middle of the night) and the church needs you to not only be present, but involved in using your gifts for the benefit of the Lord and His church. No matter which body part you are, you are the only one who can fill the void of your place. God has made you - uniquely - to fill a place in His church to make it function perfectly (dysfunctional churches are usually missing a few parts or have people pretending to be a part that they are not).

So, go ahead, call me weird. I don't mind because I know it's true. And this great self revelation is quite liberating. Go ahead, call yourself weird and realize we fit together like a great big 3-D jigsaw puzzle that is God's wonderful beautiful creation!