Saturday Rambling

Good morning and happy Saturday.  I hope that you have had a good week and that you can identify a few ways how God is working in your life.

Almost all of us have had the experience where we are watching something on TV and it gets interrupted at a key moment with a commercial. Most of the time commercials are either an annoyance or a welcome break so you can take care of business before your show comes back on.  One exception to this are the Progressive commercials that feature Dr. Rick.  If you haven’t seen them, the premise is that Dr. Rick is a life coach that is seeking to help people to not become like their parents.  He takes the group to the local home improvement store where he coached them to not say anything when they encounter the person with blue spiked hair.  In another, he tries but fails to get them to open a pdf.  In others, he tries to get them to sit without making grunting sounds, to not be annoying at the airport or the grocery store.  The reason they are funny is that they bring up some of the idiosyncrasies, quirks and outright annoying things that people do.  Like it or not, all parents have them.  In fact, all people do.   A book I read one time was titled, “Everyone is normal…until you get to know them.”  How true that is.  Some people just make it easier to figure that out. 

The reality is that we pick up habits from our parents.  As much as we say we won’t do it we often end up as quirky as they are.  Parents have influence on us whether we want to recognize it or not.  However, that is not all bad.  In fact, many times your parents influence you in a lot of positive ways.  The majority of them truly want what is best for their kids.  What all of us need to understand, whether we are a parent or not, is that we influence the people around us.  The question becomes what kind of influence to we want to be? 

I close with a couple of verses from the apostle Paul:

Join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us.  Philippians 3:17

Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ. 1 Corinthians 11:1

 Seek to glorify God in all that you do. Live for Him. Show others what it looks like to follow Jesus.