Stream of Consciousness 10

It's crazy that I've done ten of these.
Blogging is fun. :)

It's Mother's Day today and my mom is pretty great. Tell your mom how much you appreciate her. :)

Today in church my pastor told a story about a college kid who was there during some tornado and he actually held up  the foundation of a building while his girlfriend could escape, but then the building crushed him and he died.
Whenever I hear stories like that I worry that, if I were faced with the same situation, I would save myself first and leave my loved ones to die.
But I never want to be faced with a situation like that to find out what I'd do.

Yesterday I avoided yet another opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus. I pray one day I will have the courage to ask a complete stranger if she goes to church or not.

So I was at King Soopers the other day buying a book. There was this shifty-looking kid with his hood up at a self-checkout register, so I avoided the one next to him and went to one across from him. Well as I'm checking out he comes up to me and asks if I have two pennies. I didn't, so I told him that. He sighed and I asked him what he needed to buy. He goes "I just need eighteen cents to buy that." He pointed to the Monster energy drink. I pulled a dollar out of my wallet and gave it to him. He just looked really sad that he couldn't buy the thing. He said thanks and went away and I continued to check out.
But get this-   he gave me my $0.98 back.
I was really impressed because I probably wouldn't have given the person their change back if I were him. I mean, they gave me a dollar, I'd use the dollar.
I suppose that makes me selfish.

The end of of the school year is coming up and I have learned quite a bit my junior year of high school. Too much to put in a blog post like this, I'll write one later with my reflections.

One of the things I absolutely hate in when I get judged at church. And I don't mean like "Hey, Amanda. I've noticed such and such sin in your life and I want to help you overcome it."
I mean like "Oh. You saw Noah. I saw God's Not Dead." "You read Harry Potter/The Hunger Games/whatever-"secular"- book-or-movie-you-can-think-of? I choose not to read that kind of stuff." "You don't listen to K-Love?" "YOU DON'T LIKE CHRIS TOMLIN." And then just getting stared at. It happens all the time from so many people but I feel like it would be inappropriate to argue with them at the time it happens. So I am posting this in hopes that they will read it.

First of all, I just don't like Christian contemporary. It doesn't mean I'm a sinner. Nowhere in the Bible does it command I listen to "Christian" music. Now, it says in Phil 4:8 to think of whatever is pure, noble, lovely, etc. etc. But that doesn't limit it to just the Christian genre of entertainment. To me, most of the songs sound the same and the lyrics are generally not creative or meaningful. You can listen to that music all you want, but I won't.
Second, just because something is "secular" doesn't mean I should avoid it. To me, life would be pretty boring if I forwent all things "secular." Also, how can I expect to engage culture if I don't watch/read/educate myself in what the culture engages in. Of course, I must make sure I am being edified by it in some way. Just because it's not "Christian" doesn't mean it's horrible.
And lastly, about Noah. I feel like I need to defend myself. I suppose I probably should have had a bigger issue with it being unbiblical. But I didn't. I went to see it to see if it was at least a decent story. And it wasn't, and I was mad that is was inaccurate AND a crap story.
I didn't want to go see another Christian movie because, quite honestly, I don't care about it that much. And I have no requirement to get excited about one every time one is released.

Well, I got some stuff off my mind in this post...... Sorry for the rant. BUT IT IS TRUE.

I feel like I should put some happy stuff after that angry stuff, so here's some pictures of people smiling. :)

Happy Mother's Day!
-Amanda



PS: A friend of mine wrote a good thing about music choices. Check it out: http://www.daughterofpearlblog.com/music-doesnt-make-you-better-than-me/