go red

red&black
Originally uploaded by Teng...11.

it's raining outside.

there's always been something about rain...makes me think.

this week, i've been contemplating growing up. i guess it's normal to contemplate that as i was at a family reunion right outside the city of Crown Point...the city i spent the first 12 years of my life in. i saw the lady that used to babysit me, my childhood bff and the younger kid next door who's now grown and owns his own business. the whole time i talked with the lady who babysat me, she just kept saying, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU'RE SO HUGE!".

it made me feel like i'm either pudgy or just really grown up.

so growing up. for awhile now that little rebellious streak of mine has been directed towards anything that scents of legalism. if someone said that wearing red is the only thing holy, i would throw out all shirts with the slightest hue of red and wear only black. i mean, who can dictate God's color preferences?!? and who's to say that red really is my color anyway? who's to say that i'm not a GREEN kinda' girl...

ok ok. i get it that my rebellious response is not only childish, but it's tacky. but the thing that really struck home in my heart was as i was thinking about Romans 12:2A,

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..."

i've been working on that whole conformed thing for a while...and thought i was working on the transformed thing. but as i look at Him, i think, it's not that wearing anything but red is necessarily wrong, it's just that wearing red is the BEST thing...it's the way He created me to live. and it's not even about a normal life that's really good and looks great alongside the next nonChristian's life. rather, the transformed life is so amazingly removed, that non Christians recognize it as the way they ache to live.

let me try saying this again...it's not the color red. it's not that legalistic people are always right...it's just that, they're usually onto something...they are usually sensing out a few guidelines that make this a life lived best.

the black and blue wearers of the world know that red is really their color. and it's really my color. i just don't tell those wearing blue that blue doesn't become them... :)

so. i'm pushing ahead today. not to 'not wear black' but to wear red in such a way that all will know that He is indeed alive.

grace and peace,

annetta