Recently I read Brennan Manning's Abba's Child. Like all of Manning's books, it is an incredible book worth your time. Manning had a knack for writing about love, and this book does not stray from that pattern.
One of the central themes of Abba's Child is the idea of finding my value in God's love for me. Seriously, God loves me and that should be the primary source of my value and self worth. It makes sense on a cursory level, but when you examine it closely, it becomes rather tricky. How many of us do this? I typically don't, but having the idea brought to the forefront makes me consider it deeply and strive to engage with it.
God loves me and that should be the source of value for myself. Everything else is secondary, if they should matter at all. Instead, I admittedly often place more importance on whether other people like me, especially people I like or look up to. I'll often go to great lengths to capture someone's attention, especially if they happen to be a pretty girl. And if they eventually reject me, my self-esteem plummets and I am shaken to my core.
So, the question I face, is why don't I place similar and even greater emphasis on the fact that God loves me? Certainly God's love for me is stronger and more important than any person's love of me, or any aspect of society's regard for who I am and what I do. I think it is because I tend to keep God at bay in a vague, unspecific location in my life. Yes, God may be a personal God, but he doesn't text me at night when I'm lonely. God doesn't like my Facebook status or follow me on Twitter.
I think, especially in this electronic age, I desire immediate gratification through immediate, electronic communication and attention. Have you even been with a person, but they can't put their phone down? They can't stop checking social media in order to actually be with you? I, sadly, am guilty of this. Sometimes a hundred strangers I'll never meet giving me a digital thumbs up is more gratifying than talking to the person right in front of me. How much more appealing is such attention, even though it's purely superficial illusion, than the often barely perceptible affection of an amorphous God who is somewhere, out there, maybe even close in my heart, but not illuminating my phone's screen?
I take God's love for granted, and how can I find my value in God's love if I don't value that love?
And that is what I am trying to incorporate more into my life. I am trying more and more to be mindful of how incredible God's ridiculous, absurd, and downright stupid love for me is. That love for me should be the primary source of my self worth. Then, really, how much does the opinions of others really affect me? Your disenchantment with my charm and ruggedly handsome appearance is of little consequence for I am Abba's child.
And now on to Wednesday!
I have been rather ill for the past couple days. All right, it's been more like a week and the illness is still lingering. But during this period of sickness and rest, I found myself watching Alien 3 multiple times. I'm not really sure why I watched it so many times, but it felt like the thing to do at the time in my haze of congestion and cold medicine.
David Fincher's entry into the Alien saga gets an understandably bad reputation. It suffered from immense studio interference before Fincher was even brought on board as the director. I never really cared for it, but after my recent viewing I appreciate it more. After the explosive action of Aliens, this third movie is a call back to the slow horror of the first movie. But this film goes even further, making the entire atmosphere bleak and troublesome. None of the protagonists are all that likeable and, really, there's no happy ending to speak of. It's all together a dark and depressing movie.
That doesn't really sound like a recommendation, I know. It's still not my favorite Alien movie, and it requires a certain mindset I need to be in to even want to watch it. I guess being gravely ill is that type of mindset. Anyway, if you haven't watched it recently, you might want to give it another try. Don't expect masterful horror. Don't expect fantastic action. Expect something different, and perhaps uncomfortable.
And that's my rambling.
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