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Hello all, I decided to make this week's post early partly because this will probably be the only free time I'll have until Saturday and because I thought of something earlier. I was eating a slice of ice cream cake and I thought of something: most of the world has never tasted chocolate. Think about that: chocolate a food once used as currency, a food that has spawned a new kind of addiction, a food that we pass everyday in the grocery store, and most of the world has never tasted it. And that got me thinking some more and it just made me really be thankful for things we have deemed "the simple things" because in all honesty guys: most of these things are luxuries. We think that getting out of bed and actually feeling refreshed is a simple thing that we enjoy but there are people all over the world, even here in America that consider OWNING a bed a great luxury. And I'm not making this to speak out against privilege but I do want to say something: there are five types of people in this world:
- Those without luxuries
- Those who have luxuries and don't appreciate them
- Those who live for luxuries
- Those who believe luxuries are bad, they know because they see the damage it causes every time they turn on their HD surround sound movie theater flat-screen TV
- Those who try to appreciate everything about their lives even though it's far from perfect and try to share their joy with other people
Guys I just got to ask: why aren't there more of the fifth type? I have a friend at my church named Nick who has been a huge inspiration to me. This man has divorced parents, he is pretty much raising his niece by himself, he is constantly picked on at school because he has morals, he has gotten rejected tons of times when he simply asks someone if they would like to talk about the Gospel, this man has survived a house being burnt to the ground, and he gets angry sometimes and it's kind of scary when that happens. But he never gives up, to the point where one of his friends has asked him: "why have you not given up yet?" Nick's answer to this still amazes me: "because I have God helping me the whole way." Nick is also an amazing person in general, he laughs a lot, he tells amazing stories and funny jokes, he's in honors classes in school, he's not afraid of expressing his opinion to the point where he has come at odds with other people in our own youth group, and though I've only met his niece a few times I can say with confidence that Nick will make the best husband and father someday. I think of all this and how he can laugh through it all and I look at my struggles: not getting person records in track and not getting good grades, and I realize that I can laugh and enjoy the little things to, so I'll try to be more of a number five guy like Nick is.
