I Need More Life...

So this whole waking up early for Bible time is going alright. Basically it goes like this: my alarm goes off at 4:30, I rub my eyes and temporarily consider going back to bed. This goes on for anywhere from 1-10 minutes. Then I pull out my Bible and prop up my pillows so I'm more so sitting than laying and read a chapter or two. I try to remember one to two main points and I'm lucky if that happens because honestly, this is not prime time for me. If this sounds really informal, that's because it is. Part of me feels like this is not good enough and I should, well, PERFECT it. Because that's my goal for everything. But I'm trying to be happy about the fact that I'm spending the time and making the effort, as small as it is.

Friday, I was reading in Matthew (12 I believe). Jesus' disciples were doing things that the Pharisees didn't like, like picking food to eat on the Sabbath. And Jesus was like, "Hey, that's Old Testament Law stuff. I have come to make things BETTER." Big paraphrase there. But the main point that I thought at the end of my reading was, "Jesus is making things better."

Fast forward a couple of hours at work. There's this guy there that kind of pisses me off. I'm not going to give reasons here, because that will just be me trying to justify my feelings. I want to believe that I have every right to feel however I want because he's just so annoying. I kind of snapped at him at work. The short version of the story is, I believed that he wronged me and was blowing it off. And I was NOT going to be without an apology. So I got my little head bobbing and my little finger wagging and told him how it was. And surprisingly, he was really nice about it. I was expecting a verbal throwdown and I got...the apology that I wanted. I went back to work and started thinking, "I really like this guy." And the confrontation seemed to make our relationship better. We were talking like friends the whole day. Instead of getting annoyed/bored at his stories, I found the humor in them. I was almost tempted to think that I had done the right thing by being a royal beotch to this man. I mean, I'm an introverted girl. I bottle my emotions and that's bad. I let them out in a healthy way here right? The relationship wasn't ruined, in fact it seemed to have gotten better as a result of the confrontation.

But here's the thing. If he had reacted in a negative way, I would have told him off (even more so than I did the first time). I decided in my head that I was going to get what I wanted (an apology) no matter what happened. And as I thought about this more throughout the day, I saw the correlation between what I had read and my life. Jesus came to take what was there and make it better. What comes naturally to me is to look out for MYSELF. It doesn't come naturally for me to think about other people over myself. There is no way that I would have gotten a bad reaction from this guy and thought, "What does George need? What would be best for him? Is he having a bad day? Should I ask about that?" My natural self is selfish and prideful and ugly. And Jesus came to bring something better, not just to bring grace where there used to be laws, but He's bringing something better for ME too. He's bringing life. He's bringing LIFE.

That's kind of the concept that I'm obsessing over right now. My comments about life lately have been things like, "I don't have a life" and "My life blows right now." I don't mean them literally of course. It's not that I don't have a life, but there's something I'm craving more of. I don't want to go to more parties, do more shopping, watch more movies. I'm not craving more activities, more friends, or more things. And to be honest, I'm not sure how to put into words exactly what I want. Some type of fulfillment I think. The small changes I've made lately (more Bible, more prayer, more thoughts of God) have given me more life and I'm wanting even more of that. And so I'm contemplating the whole concept of Jesus bringing life and actually BEING the life. I'm allowing myself to consider the possibility that the purpose of what He's telling people to do in the New Testament is to give those people life. That doing what He's telling ME to do in the New Testament will give ME life also. I don't have conclusions on this matter. But I'm thinking...