Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11
In God’s kingdom, being odd is part of simply following Jesus. We are “aliens and strangers in the world.” Jesus was odd too. In Him, God became flesh and lived among us, inviting us to embrace a foreign way of thinking; to exchange our focus from the physical to the spiritual, from the fleeting kingdoms of this world, to His everlasting Kingdom. He invites us to dance instead of walk; to be odd…simply odd.
But, this odd life is not for the sake of appearing weird. Being odd for the sake of Jesus is the highest of callings. It’s living an odd life marked by love, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, humility, and self-sacrifice.
A. W. Tozer said, “A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for one whom he has never seen. He talks familiarly every day to someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order that he might be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up. He is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge.”
As it turns out, maybe feeling odd isn’t such a bad thing. In fact, perhaps if the world does not recognize the oddness of Jesus in us, we should start to wonder why.
God, sometimes even our Christian friends don't recognize Christ in others--they think it's personality or sexuality or beauty. Help us to remember that being "different" is a compliment from people who don't know that they see you in us. Thank you for a daughter who is adorned with beauty inside and out. Amen.
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