Jon Acuff's Blog, page 109

Surviving Spring Break when you don't get one (Part 2).

In our continuing look at Spring Break and the ways to survive, we pick up with part 2 of the story. (Click here to read part 1.)

Today, let's talk about how to survive Spring Break if you live at home with your parents or work in a cubicle.

Spring breaking if you live at home with your parents.

Ahh, did the old boomerang move, huh? I did that after college too. In order to survive Spring Break if your roommates are named "mom and dad," you'll need to get creative.

1. Do not bring 80 pounds of sand into the living room.

This move is amazing for the Sigma Chi house. It's horrible for your parents' house. You'd be amazed at how uptight parents are when they come home from work and find three feet of ocean grade sand just west of the kitchen. Don't do this.

2. Don't destroy your bedroom as if it were a hotel room.

It's Spring Break, or what some people call "Chair throwing season." Resist the urge to drag your mattress into the hall. Put down the table lamp. Don't turn over the TV "just because it seemed like something Russell Brand would do." You're at home. You might be able to register under a fake name, Donnie Blockensmith, and then escape in the middle of the night before the Holiday Inn staff catches you. But you're parents? They will find you. They know where you live. And if you destroy your bedroom Spring Break style, they might destroy you, Jerry Springer style.

3. Pretend you're on MTV's The Real World.

You might not be able to go on an epic Spring Break, but you could pretend that your living situation is like MTV's famous reality show, The Real World. Ask your parents if they'll play along for a few months. Will there be cameras all over the house? Nope, but that doesn't mean you can't all pick from one of the many stereotypes available for houseguests on The Real World. Maybe your dad could be the angry skinny guy with lots of tattoos and a heart of gold. You could be the jock who is the king of his small town but feels like a small fish in a big pond in the city  and will eventually headbutt a wall. You're mom could be the girl who wants to be a model or an actress or waitress. You don't have to use those. Just have some fun with it. It's a great distraction from Spring Break.

Spring breaking if you work in a cubicle.

Welcome to three-and-a-half walls of fabric frustration. Sitting in a cubicle right now? Here are some important things to remember in order to survive Spring Break this year.

1. Do not bring a blender to the office break room.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who said anything about alcohol? Interesting that your first thought went to margaritas. Very interesting, indeed. Quit judging me. Maybe I was talking about boysenberry smoothies. Regardless of your beverage of choice, don't ever bring a blender to work. That's a no-no on par with "Don't microwave fish in the break room." Seriously, what made you think cod chowder was a good choice for your lunch at work? We all know it's you. The nose, much like the hips, don't lie. Stop it.

2. Do not tan on the roof during your lunch break.

Do you know what Hawaiian Tropic Sun Tan Oil smells like? Coconut and getting fired. You start lathering up in your cubicle for a mid-day bit of sunshine on the roof of your company, and they are going to fire you. Security won't walk you out, they'll probably push you out of the building with a stick, you're so slick with suntan oil. Ridiculous.

3. Do not use Spring Break as an excuse to wear jorts to work.

A lot of companies have "Casual Friday." Do you know what no company has? "Jorts Thursday." You show up wearing jean cut-off shorts for work during Spring Break, and you'll wish you had cargo pants on to fit your cubicle knick knacks in when they tell you to clean out your desk. There's no such thing as "business jorts." Trust me on this one please.

4. Do not ask a coworker to commemorate the week with a tattoo.

Is it tempting to ask someone you sit near to heat up a bic pen and give you a jailhouse style tattoo so you'll never forget your cubicle during Spring Break? Sure it is. We've all been there. But what are you going to get? A really ballin' stapler? A tattoo of the printer that collates and scans? The sun setting over your company with a sailboat in the distance and the words "cubicles 4-eva" emblazoned across your bicep? No. Don't.

I suppose it's possible that despite having your first real job, living at home with your parents or working in a cubicle, you could take a traditional Spring Break with your college friends. But if not, don't despair my Liger flealess friend. The real world has something amazing hidden in it –paid vacation days.

You go on vacation, and they pay you!

Go to the beach? You're getting paid.

Ski trip? Paid.

Staycation at home to catch up on a Gilmore Girls Marathon? Paid.

You get to vacation like a boss when you're out of college. And that just might be sweeter than any boysenberry smoothie you'll ever have in Cabo.

Surviving spring break when you don't get one. (Part 1)

I got fleas on the best Spring Break trip I took in college.

In my defense, they might have been "Liger fleas."

Long before Napoleon Dynamite let the cat out of the bag about ligers (feline joke in a sentence about jungle cats? That is rich!), a small homemade zoo outside of Panama City, Florida had a couple of them.

How did they acquire a deadly tiger-lion love child? I'm not sure. I was too busy getting fleas at that ramshackle zoo that was devoid of all the romantic comedy hijinks Matt Damon promised in his movie We Bought A Zoo.

My hope was that much like the origin of Spiderman, I would gain some sort of superhuman powers from the bite of the Liger Fleas. Thus far, that has not been the case. But I did learn an important lesson – it's easy to have a fun Spring Break when you're in college.

Even getting bitten by bugs, sleeping on the floor of a sad motel room next to 14 of your friends, and eating ketchup packets for dinner when you run out of money midweek is kind of fun. It's Spring Break! Whooo!

And then you become an adult.

You graduate college. Or you decide not to go to college and you enter the workforce. Suddenly you find yourself out in the "real world." Gone are the sunny shores of Cancun. Instead of the beach, you end up staring at the walls of a cubicle, which always come in one of three colors: gray, off gray and hopelessness.

I know all about that. I had 8 different jobs in 8 different cubicles before I figured out how to close the gap between my day job and my dream job. I wrote a book about it called Quitter to help other people discover their passions and then pursue them. And part of the process to finding your dream job is learning how to fall in like with a job you don't love. Impatience kills more dreams than failure, and if you're going to be at a day job for a little while, as you build the path to your dream job, you might as well not be miserable 40 hours a week.

What better way to beat back misery at work than to navigate your way through Spring Break like a champ? After writing about ways to "Survive church as a single adult," I thought it might be fun to write about how to "Survive spring when you don't get one."

Where do you get started? What do you need to do? Will Snooki be involved in any manner? So many questions. To answer those, I've broken down a few tips for you into three different categories. Today, I'll share the first category, and tomorrow I'll post the other two. (A two-parter on SCL? Exciting!)

Find the category that best fits you, read the tips, and then side hug me next time we meet as a sign of your gratefulness for the wisdom I am about to impart.

Here's how to survive Spring Break if you:

Work at your first "real job."

You're out of college or high school and find yourself working your very first real job. Please keep the following in mind during Spring Break:

1. Do not request Spring Break off.

Nothing says "I don't really care about this job," like telling your boss, "I'm going to need to take Spring Break off. There's a Jell-O fight I really want to attend with my friends who are still in college."

2. Stay off of social media during Spring Break.

Speaking of your friends still in college, ignore them during Spring Break. Seriously, they are temporarily dead to you during that week. Shut down Facebook. Log off Twitter. Ignore their emails and texts. The last thing you want to read while you sit in a meeting is a status update from a friend that says, "Amazing time in Daytona! They're dropping free money from a helicopter and everyone here is beautiful!"

3. Do not accidentally show up at places you're friends are going for Spring Break.

"What? You guys are in Negril, Jamaica too this week? What are the chances! What a small world it is." Stop. Don't do it. If you're not careful, you'll become that older guy at the nightclub wearing Axe body spray dancing by yourself trying to meet college freshman. You think I'm kidding, but that reality will sneak up on you like Grendel's mother in Beowulf. (Axe body spray and a reference to an 8th century Anglo-Saxon poem in the same paragraph? Unbelievable!)

4. Do not ask people at work what they're doing for Spring Break this year.

Know what they're doing? Working. And if you go to a staff meeting and yell out, "Whose ready for Spring Break? Swag!!" you will be met with a blank wall of stares that say, "We're sending this kid back to the mailroom as fast as possible."

Stayed tuned for part 2 tomorrow: How to survive spring break if you live at home with your parents and how to survive spring break if you work in a cubicle.

Question:

Where did you go on the best Spring Break you ever had?

CROSSRoads

It's guest post Friday! Here's one from Aaron Chewning. You can follow him on Twitter or at his website. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here's how!)

CROSSRoads – by Aaron Chewning

On each episode of CMT's Crossroads, a country artist and an artist from a different genre team up to play a show and swap stories. Some of the most notable episodes paired artists like John Mayer with Keith Urban, Lionel Richie with Kenny Rogers, and Ray Charles with Travis Tritt. It's truly a fascinating experiment of forced friendship and musical genre-bending.

Being the CCM superfan that I am, I've developed a version of Crossroads that would pair a Christian artist with a secular artist. I think it'd be irresponsible to call it something other than CROSSroads. I've penned up a list of potential episodes for the first season of CROSSroads and here they are…

Huey Lewis and the Newsboys

AC/DC Talk

LudaCris Tomlin

Insane Casting Crowns Posse

Lecraezy Town

Andrew W. Relient K.

Hillsong UniTed Nugent

Toby Mac Miller

Kirk Franklynard Skynard

Mercy Meatloaf

Todd AgNew Kids on the Block

Charlie Hall & Oates

Bebo NorMen at Work

Run P.O.D.M.C

And the pilot episode would have to be…

Jars of Clay Aiken.

My hope is that someone out there in the interworld can flex their television-connections-muscle, and make this dream a reality. It's about time that quality, God-centered television like CROSSroads: Run P.O.D.M.C. makes its way into every home in America.

Question:

What two musical acts would you like to see collaborate?

(For more great stuff from Aaron, check out his blog!)

Seeing God in Stuff.

Recently I took a picture of God.

I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was just taking a picture of clouds.

Big, angry tornado about to hit Tennessee clouds.

And yet, when I posted the photo on Instagram a number of people told me they saw God in it.

Including me wife and she is not one to casually see God in stuff. Like the sides of barns or toaster strudels. (The toaster strudel absolutely destroys pop tarts by the way. It's like the one breakfast pastry to rule all pastries. You get to control your own icing distribution! There can be no debate on this subject.)

Here is the picture in question:

 

I still don't see it, but I do have some questions:

1. Am I less holy or more holy because I can't see God in the photo? If I squint my eyes I can kind of see Tim Allen from "The Santa Clause 2." What does that say about me?

2. I put a clarity filter on this photo before I posted it. Does adding a filter disqualify you from seeing God's face in the photo?

3. If not, how long until we have a "See God In It" iPhone app that adds a holy filter to your photos?

4. Will the person who develops that app be struck by lightning for sacrilege?

5. If I took a picture of that lightning striking that app developer, would God's face appear in the photo?

6. Could this section of questions be more circular?

Probably not. But that's the way my head works. You've seen the photo and now I have two questions for you:

Do you see God in it?

Have you ever seen God in a photo before?

 

Do we really love people who aren't Christian?

"Dad, stand up so everyone can see what I'm going to look like in 20 years."

That's how I introduced my dad during the devotional meeting at work. And it's true. I'm going to look like him, which means I'll look like Anderson Cooper or Steve Martin. Those are the two people folks always think my dad looks like. (At Lowe's one day someone approached my dad nervously, because they thought he was Anderson Cooper, and if he was in town a natural disaster must be about to hit the area.)

After, what I think was a pretty awesome introduction by me, my dad and I got to hear a guy named Al Andrews talk about dreams.

Al wrote an amazing children's book called The Boy, The Kite and The Wind. In his speech, he said, "A dream never makes sense. We're supposed to have crazy dreams. If what you dream is fairly possible, it's probably not the dream you're supposed to have."

It was a really inspiring/convicting message. My dad and I talked about it in the car later that day, and here is what he said:

"I think my dream is to get Christians to love non-Christians."

My first thought was, "That's kind of silly. I'm great at that. That's not a dream. We already do love non-Christians!" But then my dad continued to share his idea.

"We think we do. We think we're doing a good job at that, but how do you really show someone love? You spend time with them. You stand with them. You be with them. I think that's a big part of what love looks like."

And suddenly, I could no longer judge the validity of my dad's dream. The truth is, by that definition, I don't love non-Christians.

I started to look at my life and realized I don't spend a lot of time with people who aren't Christians.

I work with Christians.

I live in a neighborhood that is largely Christian.

I go to church with Christians.

I go to dinner with people from church.

I go to breakfast with Christians.

Save for the person who cuts my hair, I was shocked at how insulated I had become from the world. If spending time with non-Christians is one of the signs you love them, then I'm not doing a very good job with love.

Now the easy response to this is "Yeah, but you live in the south. It's different where I live."

And maybe it is. The south is considered the "Bible Belt" after all. But even when I lived in Massachusetts, I didn't live my life that differently. I worked with a lot more people who weren't Christians, but I don't necessarily know that I spent time with them. I tended to be the kind of Christian who liked to pray for far off people in far off lands, to say "God, give me a mission field! Give me people to reach!" And then I would sit down in my cubicle completely blind to the reality that God had already given me people to reach.

There was a building full of them. They were my coworkers. But it's easier to pray for fictional people or the people you meet on a one-week mission trip than it is to pray for the messy, 3D people you work with.

What's the fix? What's the solution? To tell you the truth, I don't know yet. This is a fresh thought that is unresolved. But someone did tell me a story that I thought was pretty interesting in the context of this challenge.

My friend knew a father who wanted to reach his local community. He wanted to step out of his Christian circle and spend time with non-Christians. We often think that's complicated or difficult, but he found a really easy way to do it.

Every Monday night he and his son, who had graduated from college, went to a local pub in their neighborhood. For three hours, every week, they sat in the same spot. Week after week, month after month, they sat and talked. My friend went with them one night and said it was amazing. In three hours, dozens of people at this local bar came and sat with them. They talked, they shared, they listened, and they became friends. Weddings, funerals, unemployment, all stages of life passed through that small booth, and slowly but surely everyone there learned that these two guys wanted to spend time with them.

When the son later graduated from grad school, the guys at the bar threw him a party. They had become family. Why?

Time = love.

It's a pretty simple equation, and it's one we see Jesus live out in the Bible. I've written about that before. Jesus was a pretty ineffective communicator by our modern standards. He could have been speaking to thousands of people on hilltops every night. Instead, he "wasted time" on slow, long dinners with a handful of people everyone looked at as sinners. Why? Because time = love. And Jesus knew how to love people.

Question:

How much time do you spend with people who aren't Christians?

4 people at your job who need "printer grace"

I work in an office. And chances are, you do too.

Unless you don't.

Maybe you're a stay-at-home mom, college student, or lumberjack. Maybe you're on the reality show Finding Bigfoot, which should more appropriately be titled Sad Walks In The Woods.

But if you do work in an office, then you spend a lot of time around the printer. Oh printer, you beehive of papyrus productivity. How I love thee. But as deep as my love runs, so too does my disdain run deep like a river for those who abuse you. (What am I talking about? How did I get off on this river kick? Weird.)

Here are 4 people I have a hard time giving printer grace to:

1. The person who prints an 400-page document and never checks the paper.

If you decide to print the dictionary, there's an unwritten rule that you have to manage the paper flow during the print job. You can't sit at your desk, crush the printer, and then casually look up every so often while a team of nine people like a NASCAR pit crew keeps refilling the paper trays your document is emptying.

2. The guy who prints on obscure paper.

"Oh, what's this?" you think when you see the printer error light blinking. So you press it and it says, "Please load circular paper that is 7.5 inches by 42 inches." What? Do they make that? What does that mean? Who sent this to the printer? The Riddler? OK, fess up, who here is printing things on the fourth dimension?

3. The toner destroyer.

This isn't an issue where I work now, but I once had a job where someone printed high-quality, toner-sucking photos of their cats. Cat after cat would pop out of that printer as the glossiest, most-covered-with-toner-paper cat you have ever seen. Later that day, when you went to print out a memo, the printer would say, "Please insert Magenta 287." At which point you'd shake the old magenta, hoping against all odds like Phil Collins that it had some left.

4. Jam Master Jay

Ah, the printer jam. If your document hasn't come out of the printer in 6 hours, there's a good chance it's jammed. There's always at least three of these a day. And finding the source of the jam is like filming a very small-scale version of Nicholas Cage's movie National Treasure. There are levels to pull, buttons to push, a secret accordion you have to play the right notes o,n and finally the printer compartment opens. With hands covered in magenta, you reach deep into the recesses of the printer and pull out what appears to be origami. (Cat origami if you worked where I worked.)

I think we've clearly determined that you are a lot nicer than me. You probably gush with grace for these four printer violators. Me? It takes work. And also hypocrisy, because sometimes I'm each of those four! But this isn't about me. It's about printers and the people we need to be kind to around them.

Did I miss anyone at the office in my list?

Things kids say in church.

What my daughter said to me that night wasn't magical.

It should have been. It probably looked like it was, but I assure you, it wasn't. But then I'm getting ahead of myself.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to bring my family with me to a conference I spoke at. It was a huge event with thousands of people, a massive 100 foot wide video screen behind the stage, and production that was incredible. After I finished my speech, I walked off stage and sat back in the front row with my family.

My six year old daughter, McRae, jumped up from her seat where she had been listening to my talk. She threw her arms wide and gave me a big hug.

That meant the world to me.

Then I put her on my lap and we sat together while a band played a few worship songs.

After a few minutes of just the most beautiful music and amazing worship, McRae turned to me to whisper something in my ear. I assumed she was going to say one of those little kid spiritual things that make you cry a little on the inside and make you want to buy your kid a puppy. Something like:

"Isn't God pretty? Doesn't he love us? Out of all the things in the world, we are the ones he loves the mostest!"

And then we'd hug again and maybe write a book together based on what she just told me. It'd be a series for kids and a series for adults called "Front Row Faith: The Jon & McRae story." Doesn't that sound delightful? Can't you already see the greeting card line in your mind? Didn't exactly happen that way though. Here is what McRae whispered to me in that tender moment:

"Daddy, my friend at school says if you stick up your middle finger, that's bad luck. But that can't be true, can it?"

"Oh," I thought, "OK, we're going to do that right now? Allright. Let's talk about why you don't give people the middle finger."

Then she stuck up her middle finger to drive home her point.

I laughed and hugged her tighter and immediately started writing the book Front Row Fingers. It probably won't sell as well as the other one, but it will be a more honest reflection of the stuff little kids like to say at church.

Question:

What's the funniest thing your kids or someone else's kids ever said at church?

Moses Was A Wuss & Potential Viral Sensation

(It's guest post Friday! Here's one from Aaron Earls. He writes a blog at TheWardrobeDoor.com and he is also on Twitter @WardrobeDoor.  If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here's how!)

Moses Was A Wuss & Potential Viral Sensation

Wait, can I say wuss? I'm always a little iffy on which words are safe. Is pansy offensive to flowers? I mean, I could go old-school with scaredy cat, but I don't think that phrase is so old-school it's ironically new school, yet. How about you just insert your own acceptable word for someone who is terrified of everything and screams like a little school girl? That's not to be offensive to little school girls, who may in fact not be stereotypically scared of things. Is it just me, or are headlines hard to write?

Whatever word you choose, Moses was that. I never thought of Moses as being scared. I always saw him with a sweet beard, wearing a red robe (always a red robe) carrying a stick and cursing the Earth-conquering Apes in front of a collapsed Statue of Liberty. As it turns out, I've really got to stop getting my theology and biblical information from Hollywood.

In Exodus 3, Moses is nonchalantly walking his father-in-law's sheep through the woods, when he sees a bush on fire. Kind of weird, but crazy things happen in the woods. It's no big deal, except this bush doesn't burn up. Moses goes to investigate. If this was a horror movie, Moses would be killed for being the stupid person who "goes to investigate." Thankfully, this is the Bible and, instead, Moses meets God.

Moses seems oddly cool with the idea of chatting with God through a burning bush. I'm not sure if this happened a lot to Moses, but he just carries on a conversation as if nothing major was happening. He listens to God identify Himself, answer questions, and give him a task. Not recognizing that he is talking to a flaming bush, Moses asks God for a sign. The flaming, talking shrub isn't enough?

God goes all Socrates and responds by asking a question, but I suppose it would have been Socrates going all God, since God did it first. He asks Moses, "What are you carrying in your hand?" Moses shows God his sweet walking stick, and God tells him to throw it on the ground. When it hits the ground, the staff turns into a snake. Impressive, but again, Moses is talking to God in the form of a burning bush. God being God, however, knew exactly what would get Moses' attention – apparently, it was snakes.

After Moses threw it on the ground, he ran from it. Seriously, read Exodus 4:3. It's not just in the NIV. It says it in the ESV and KJV, so we're cool. Moses saw the snake, and he ran. It's a good thing nobody had cell phone cameras back then. Could you imagine Moses' wife Zipporah uploading a video of his freak out to YouTube? And Pharaoh posting that to his Twitter?

PhayRizzyII: @EgyptianPeeps Check out this crazy vid of Moses running scared. Let my people go, huh? How about I let some snakes go instead? #Wuss

Thankfully, Moses' snake phobia did not go viral. Obviously, he went on to be used greatly by the God who revealed Himself in the flaming shrub. Moses was ready the next time the stick went all Transformer on him. His snake ate the Egyptian stick snakes. Notice, though, there may have been plagues of frogs, flies and locust, but God didn't send snakes all through the land. Moses would have run to the Promised Land by himself.

What other biblical moments would have blown up social media?

(For more great stuff from Aaron, check out his blog, TheWardrobeDoor.)

Putting the "fun" into fund drives on Christian radio stations.

Right now our local Christian radio station, WAYFM, is doing a fund drive. (We also have the Fish here in Nashville, but Wally from WAYFM and Jackie Velasquez from the Fish are like the Biggie and Tupac of Christian morning radio. It's a whole East Coast vs. West Coast kind of thing.)

Given how much I like Wally (he's one of the funniest people I've ever met) I decided to personally donate. How much? I'm not telling you. I'm cashing that reward in once I get to heaven. Boom!

But in addition to paying my way to get back on his show, I mean donating, I thought I'd help out by suggesting a few ways Christian radio stations can raise money.

I bet your local Christian radio station does fundraisers too. Please feel free to pass these ideas on to them.

4 ways to raise money on a Christian radio station.

1. Crowder Beard Shave-a-Thon

David Crowder's Beard + the highest bidder + an electric razor = bajillion dollars. (It's up to the winning bidder if they choose to turn it into a "Beard braid-a-thon." You want to fill that beard with colorful beads and gemstones, that's on you.)

2. Three Words – DC Talk Reunion

Is DC considered a word? I felt like saying, "Two words and one abbreviation" lost some of the power. I'm not joking about this one. You name the time and place, I'm going to this concert. I'm as serious about this as I am about wanting to attend a Travis Tritt concert. And not in an ironic, hipster way. I'd go see Travis Tritt because I think I'd like the concert. Don't believe me? Here's a quarter.

3. U2uesday

You know you program managers want to play some U2. They're the best not so secret Christian band on the planet. Give into that temptation. If you raise enough funds, then you hold a special day when it's all U2, all day. You can call it "U2uesday."

4. Jeremy Lin

I don't know what you'd do here, but this guy is on fire. He's like the Tim Tebow of the NBA. He's unstoppable and he loves the Lord. There's something here, I just know it.

Will those ideas happen? Maybe not. I'm not that powerful, but Wally is. He's great friends with TobyMac. We all live in Franklin, Tennessee together. Let's get on that reunion already. Maybe Travis Tritt can open.

Question:

Is there a Christian radio station where you live?

Thinking you're naked.

I don't want to brag, but I'm pretty awesome at applying band-aids. And make no mistake, that is an art. Because if you go too quickly and unpeel them the wrong way, they stick to themselves and you end up with a wadded up useless mess, instead of the Little Mermaid festooned bandage your daughter so desperately wants to apply to a boo boo that may in fact be 100% fictional.

Half of the injuries I treat at the Acuff house are invisible or simply wounds of sympathy. My oldest daughter will scrape her knee, and my 3-year old, realizing the band aid box is open will say, "Yo dad, I'd like to get in on that too. What do you say we put one on, I don't know, my ankle. Yeah, my ankle, let's pretend that's hurt."

But sometimes the cuts are real, like the day my 5-year old got a scrape on her face playing in the front yard. I rushed in the house and returned with a princess bandage. As I bent down to apply it to her forehead, her eyes filled up with tears and she shrunk back from me.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I don't want to wear that band-aid." She replied.

"Why? You have a cut. You need a band-aid." I said.

"I'll look silly," she answered.

Other than her sister and her mom, there was no one else in the yard. None of her friends were over, cars were not streaming by our house and watching us play, the world was pretty empty at that moment. But, for the first time I can remember, she felt shame. She had discovered shame. Somewhere, somehow, this little 5-year-old had learned to be afraid of looking silly. If I was smarter, if I had been better prepared for the transition from little toddler to little girl, I might have asked her this:

"Who told you that you were silly?"

I didn't, though. That question didn't bloom in my head until much later, and I didn't understand it until I saw God ask a similar question in Genesis 3:11. To me, this is one of the saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible. Adam and Eve have fallen. The apple is a core. The snake has spoken. The dream appears crushed. As they hide from God under clothes they've hastily sewn together, He appears and asks them a simple question:

"Who told you that you were naked?"

There is hurt in God's voice as He asks this question, but there is also a deep sadness, the sense of a father holding a daughter that has for the first time ever, wrapped herself in shame.

Who told you that you were not enough?

Who told you that I didn't love you?

Who told you that there was something outside of me you needed?

Who told you that you were ugly?

Who told you that your dream was foolish?

Who told you that you would never have a child?

Who told you that you would never be a father?

Who told you that you weren't a good mother?

Who told you that without a job you aren't worth anything?

Who told you that you'll never know love again?

Who told you that this was all there is?

Who told you that you were naked?

I don't know when you discovered shame. I don't know when you discovered that there were people who might think you are silly or dumb or not a good writer or a husband or a friend. I don't know what lies you've been told by other people or maybe even by yourself.

But in response to what you are hearing from everyone else, God is still asking the question, "Who told you that you were naked?"

And He's still asking us that question because we are not.

In Christ, we are not worthless.

In Christ, we are not hopeless.

In Christ, we are not dumb or ugly or forgotten.

In Christ, we are not naked.

Isaiah 61:10 says:

"For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness."

The world may try to tell you a thousand different things today. You might close this post and hear a million declarations of who you are or who you'll always be, but know this:

As unbelievable as it sounds, and as much as I never expected to type this sentence on this blog:

You are not naked.

(This is a throw back post that originally appeared on SCL a few years ago.)