Taking Notes

    When I was younger, I tried a little too hard to be religiously "cool". As I got older, I realized the mature thing to do at church was take notes. All the serious Christians did that, so I felt it was my obligation. Let's be honest though, I wasn't doing this to benefit my relationship with God. I was doing it to look good in other people’s eyes. I wanted everyone to know I was serious about this stuff but in reality I wasn’t.

    Frightened to get called on to read, I would opt out on bringing my bible to service. However, I had my pen and journal out ready to catch all the important stuff the pastor said. Being the 12-year-old I was, I seemed to zone out a lot. I would freak out when I saw the person next to me write something down. I would frantically look around at all the pens moving and realize I had missed something good. Sometimes, as I was listening, nothing I thought good enough to write would entered my ears. Even in those times I would see half the congregation writing.

    The answer to all my problems was this. Cheat. I would “cheat” off other peoples notes. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t writing down dumb, unimportant things. I would just glance to the papers left and right of me. I knew the things they jotted down would be way better than mine, even if I didn’t have enough time to get the whole sentence.

    Sometimes we try to “cheat” on sermon notes in our own lives. Our paper might feel so empty that we feel like we have to pretend we are someone else to fill it. If we can just take a peek at someone else’s life. Act how they act. Do what they do. We think that can fill our pages, but your teachers where right when they said you never learn anything from cheating. If you are “cheating” in your relationship with God, your page will never be full. You will have a list of uncompleted sentences that make no sense to you at all.

    Comparing your life with other peoples will get you nowhere. When we do things with only the intention of impressing others, we miss the point. We shouldn’t be focused on the opinions others have of us, we should seek the opinion of our Creator. What I didn’t know then was, that when writing down notes in church, I should put what touches my heart, not the person’s next to me. That means no cheating or comparing, because you never know if the person next to you is doing the same thing. You can’t live someone else’s relationship with God, you need to make it your own.