Mt. Sophia Ideas

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to appreciate things that are new? The first brisk fall mornings with their puffy grey skies and turning leaves. The first snow of the year. The first day of school. I remember even feeling a little tinge of excitement at opening a new math book (if you know me, you know of my unfriendly relationship with numbers).

You know that feeling when you go somewhere new? It’s so easy to be in love with life and your surroundings when there’s a whole new world [go ahead and sing the song] around you. New people, new places to see, new sounds and smells and flavors. It’s all so exciting, so inspiring.

But what about when we’ve been living in the same patterns, doing the same things for days and weeks and years? I sometimes find myself wondering where all the appreciation and excitement goes. Is it the world around me that’s changing, or is it just me? I find myself slipping into mediocrity. The comfort of predictability becomes a crutch, the beauty of my surroundings goes unnoticed. I forget to see, and to open my mind, and to feel. I just get by. And that’s really depressing.

Because life isn’t mediocre, or boring, or dull. Life is full of possibility. In fact, that reminds me of a little song we used to sing in Sunday school. “I am a promise, I am a possibility, … I am a great big bundle of potentiality!”

However cheesy the delivery was, the message is so true it’s not even funny. I don’t care who you are, you were made to live life to the fullest, right where you are. You were made to do great things, right where you are. You were made to be awesome. And God has given us our friends, and our towns and cities and states, and the whole great big world in which to be awesome. It’s all full of possibility. It all has potential for inspiration, for help, for encouragement, for restoration, for Awesome.

Sometimes we just have to make ourselves see it, and chase it as hard as we can.