I used to look at the biggest outcasts in my school and wonder. No, I wasn't looking in a mirror, but there were times when I wondered, and wished that I were. After all, it would have been nice to be the best at something. Have you ever wondered what it would take to be, hands-down, the biggest outcast in your school?
I have, but just when I think I may be able to master it, the trends change and everything gets turned upside down. So I am caught in some place in the middle where neither cool nor outcast reside. Mocking me from both sides is my place of honor.
There is something worse than feeling like God is always punishing you. It's feeling like God doesn't think of you at all. The insignificant wish that God thought of them at all, even if it is just to be treated poorly. At least then they knew they mattered in some way.
I have often wondered if this wasn't what caused Job the most pain. He could man up and battle against the physical pain. He could even do an adequate job of expressing his feelings and emotionally purge. But through most of his trial, he endured it with a silence that drove him crazy. He felt as though he were ignored by the One Person who could make a difference.
Job 19:4-12
4 Even if I have sinned,
that is my concern, not yours.
5 You think you’re better than I am,
using my humiliation as evidence of my sin.
6 But it is God who has wronged me,
capturing me in his net.[a]
7 “I cry out, ‘Help!’ but no one answers me.
I protest, but there is no justice.
8 God has blocked my way so I cannot move.
He has plunged my path into darkness.
9 He has stripped me of my honor
and removed the crown from my head.
10 He has demolished me on every side, and I am finished.
He has uprooted my hope like a fallen tree.
11 His fury burns against me;
he counts me as an enemy.
12 His troops advance.
They build up roads to attack me.
They camp all around my tent.
It's making a call in your time of need and getting only that reassuring recording, letting you know your message will be received. But will it be returned? One can only hope.
I thought about ending this post with the previous paragraph. But then I was concerned that my friends might assume I had gone emo ten years after being emo was in. While the timing would be totally me, showing up tragically late for a party, instead of fashionably so, that is not the direction I am headed.
However, I am attempting to understand the feelings of insignificance from every direction, both healthy and unhealthy. Because it is my contention that understanding how the mind works, along with the pushing and pulling of society, will lead us to recognize where our true significance lies, not with us, but in the One who made us.
That is my insignificant wish.
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