look in your heart and you’ll find

A number of things have gotten me to thinking about how each one of us chooses to live our lives. What do we do and why do we do it? Jason Mraz’s song Live High encourages us to “Live high, live mighty, live righteously takin it easy,” but how do we do that exactly. Growing up in the Christian faith, living this was is clearly defined for us in the Bible. We are called to love our neighbors and lend a helping hand to those who are in need of one. On the other hand, I know a number of people who spend thier lives working towards this goal who arn’t a part of the Christian faith at all. We all have an internal desire to do good. We can all accomplish this is different ways, but the ability and want is present deep inside of all of us.

In my Educational Psychology class this morning we discussed motivation and what perspective the Bible provides us with on the topic. We all must be very careful with our motivations behind living high. In Matthew 6 in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns about our motivations. If we are giving to the poor, praying or fasting in order for others to see that we are doing good, our motivation is in the wrong place. Instead of doing righteous things to be personal honored by men, we should be doing righteous things in order to honor God.

This idea reminds me of an episode of Friends, The One where Pheobe Hates PBS. In this episode Pheobe tries to prove to Joey that it is possible to do a selfless good deed, while Joey believes that there is some selfish motivation or outcome to each good deed that is done. By the end of the episode all of the good deeds Pheobe does prove to have some kind of positive outcome for her as well as those she did the good deed for. When I really think about this, it is inevitable that we are going to have other motivations behind our good deeds. For Christians, it may just be our need/want to do good in the world and follow God’s will and teachings. I see nothing wrong with that being our motivation. Who doesn’t want to do good deeds for others and practice living out Jesus’ teachings? The problem is created in our motivation as discussed in Matthew 6. As long as our motivation involves honoring God over honoring ourselves, we are able to do good while also feeling good, allowing us to “live high, live mighty, live righteously.”

I’m sorry to announce, but it is Monday. Getting out of bed this morning for an 8 o’clock was extremely difficult. I had a great weekend and I really just didn’t want it to end. It also didn’t help that I really just couldn’t sleep last night at all, for who knows what reason, but it happens.

My weekend all began Friday night with the first United Voices of Praise fellowship of the year. It was great to get together for dinner and Mad Gab. Choir has been my favorite thing about Messiah. Our group is mostly student run and based entirely on worship which is an amazing atmosphere compared to most other choirs I’ve been involved with. These fellowships allow us to get closer as a choir and actually get to know the people we sing with instead of just recognizing the face and nothing else. After that excitement, it was a really chill night watching Friends (by far my favorite tv show and I own the entire series on dvd so I’ll most likely talk about it alot) and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, but you can never go wrong with that.

Saturday started with my very first trip to Baker’s Diner, which is apparently a big Messiah tradition I was told I had been missing out on. And to tell you the truth I had been missing out, it was delicious and a good price for a poor college student like we have all become. We had an absolutely adorable waitress and scrumptious french toast which is always a good thing. When we got back to school I took a nap (another college tradition haha) before going to watch the girls volleyball game against Penn State Altoona. That night was another chill one filled with The Pursuit of Happyness, Friends (both tv and personal), and a sheetz run.

Sunday was by far my productive day even beyond getting a fair amount of homework done. After church and the traditional Lottie lunch of Chicken Cordon Bleu,a few of us ran to Wal-mart and Target. During our trip we found Christmas lights, so my roommate Emily and I decided to finally make our dorm room a home after already living at Messiah for three weeks. Once we got back to school, we decided to rearrange our room in a much more homely way and put our lights up. Our rearrangement really worked and I actually love it. With all this excitement we did manage to fit in some homework which unfortunately had to be done but that was done inbetween a dinner at Cracker Barrel and rewarding ourselves with She’s the Man, providing a perfect ending to the weekend.