Life is Beautiful

It's official. I have made the leap to a smartphone.

A couple weeks ago I upgraded my old semi-smartphone (you know, the kind that looks like a dumb phone, but you can check email on it) to a really basic blackberry-looking phone that didn't come with extra data charges. I thought it'd be better to go simple, save some money, and limit the time I spent glued to my cellular device. Within the first few days, however, of using that basic phone, I had problems with it insisting on randomly restarting itself and displaying the wrong time. Not O.K. After enduring the stress of returning that phone, I gave in and bought a smartphone: the HTC Rhyme. It actually works AND it's purple! It does a bunch of other stuff too, but that's all I care about at this point.

I've been challenged this week to do a self-check and re-evaluate what I consider to be important. When technology spirals to the center of our lives, it becomes difficult for us to see beyond the screen in front of us. Materialism is highly addictive; with just one taste, we're hooked. We start thinking that a good life means having the coolest gadgets, the biggest house, and the prettiest profile picture. When we idealize life like that, we cheat ourselves in one of two ways: either through self-pity, resulting from an insatiable desire for more of the things we can't have, or through self-indulgence, resulting from too much of the things that we think we need.

Either way, we miss out on this.

52 Week Project 2012 ~ Week 28

A holy life is a beautiful life. "Worship the Lord with the beauty of holy lives" (Psalm 96:9). Worshipping the Lord and bringing glory to his name should be our goal as long as we have breath. That's our purpose; the essence of life. If we deny that, we deny God the praise he deserves and we deny ourselves the experience of a truly beautiful life.

Jesus came so that we might have life to the full. Not full of stuff, but full of Him. For only in Christ will we ever be complete. Jesus spoke to his disciples these words which hold true for us today: 

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing...You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last" (John 15:5, 16).

May we live abiding in Christ this week and worship God with the beauty of holy lives.