Different

"Different" seems to be coming up in all aspects of my life recently. People, such as my friends, family, co-workers, patients, and random guys on the dance floor, look at me and exclaim (literally, exclamations all over the place), "Rachel! You are/look/seem SO different!" At first, I brushed it off as a strange, kind of awkward compliment. It seemed especially strange coming from various guys that I know. I mean really, who tells that to someone?

But I was curious as to what people were seeing that was so different. As I remembered comments, they started to take on a pattern - what was seen as "different" were my giftings from the Lord. How He has created me is starting to look very, very different to the world around me.

One of my prayers from the beginning, and I mean back in 2010 when I first went on this trip, was that our team would seem different. Not just in the sense that we are a group of ten American athletes dressed in bright colors and carrying 15-foot long pole cases around with us, but that there is something special about us. I pray that our "different"-ness is really Christ in us and in our group, and that people would see that and want to know more. And experience it for themselves.

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." - 1 Peter 2:9-10

Yes and amen!