Even if you haven't heard those words spoken aloud, directly to your face, you have probably felt before that this is exactly what the person standing across from you thought or wanted to say. Hearing those words from someone you love really hurts. "Feeling" those words from another hurts, too.
Rejection from others is just a fact of life in this fallen world. It's something we all experience at one time or another.
- I'm a wordy - I like to read; I write; I process things through words. You're weird.
- I'm an introvert - I process thing internally, rather than thinking them through out loud. You're weird.
- Graphic screen images impact me strongly - I can still recall an image from a horror movie that I watched when I was a teenager, and that memory makes me feel like throwing up, even today. You're weird.
- I value personal integrity - Say what you mean; be what you are. Don't talk one way and walk another. Duplicity - in myself or in others - grieves me. You're weird.
- I don't think jokes or comments that belittle women or make light of sin are funny. At all. You're weird.
This list could go on and on!
You get the idea, though. Whatever it is that makes You uniquely You - someone else, someone who is different in a particular aspect of personality or belief, is going to come along and label you as weird. Dismiss you. Give you the "Ugh, I wish you would just go away" treatment.
And when that happens, if you're like me, it's awfully easy to take that hurtful comment and get all wrapped up in it. To start thinking, "Yeah, I guess I am pretty weird. I don't belong. I'm undesirable. Unlovely. Maybe I should just go away." Then you spiral downward into a pit of life-sucking, soul-crushing melancholy.
But, whatever others may say to us, Scripture teaches that, in Christ, we are God's beloved. We are described as beautiful, a delight and a joy to God, the apple of His eye. We are the ones that the holy, sovereign Creator of the universe loves beyond measure. He does not belittle us. He does not dismiss us. He does not wish we would "just go away" - no, He draws us continually into His presence.
We are studying through Romans on Sunday mornings at Grace. Romans 8 is so incredibly beautiful, so full of life and hope and love and encouragement - even while giving honest testimony to the trials and hurts of this life - that I've decided I need to commit several verses to memory. Currently, I'm working on these verses:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake, we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.' No! In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor death, nor anything else is all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39)
The knowledge and experience of that kind of love absolutely grinds to powder the barbs that others sometimes throw at us.
When I've had people throw the word "weird" at me, it's always been as a derogatory term. A slam. But, I looked up the word weird and it is also defined as: supernatural, extraordinary, fantastic.
Anyone who looks at me with a sneer on his face and calls me "weird" - well, he obviously doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
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