About a week ago I got into an accident. It was a very unfortunate chain of event. Two Mondays ago I had decided to build a new type of potato launcher. So I drew up the plans and bought all of the necessary materials. On Friday I started to put it together. When I had finished putting on the glue and locking all of the pieces into place, I had to take a break and let the glue dry. Then when I came back to it on Saturday I tried to shoot it. But I was met with failure. My combustion chamber was to big and I couldn’t get my fuel (Axe Body Spray) to ignite. So I went back to work. On Sunday Morning I got the new couplet that I needed to put the combustion chamber back together after I cut in in half. So I glued the couplet into place and “Walla.” The PVC part of this experiment was finally finished. To finish the project in its entirety, I needed to finish the electrical part. I drilled two holes into the PVC for the electrodes. Placed them into their finished location, and it was finished. I quickly looked into the combustion chamber to make sure that the electrodes where still working, clicked the igniter once and Disaster…
With a stunning flash of light the right side of my face was quickly engulfed in flames. I received 2nd degree and 1st degree burns all over my face. All of my eyelashes, 3 quarters of my eyebrow, and a large portion of the hair on the right side of my head was incinerated instantaneously from the heat. I rushed inside to get my face under water because it burned like nothing I had ever felt before. My parents came in to see what had happened and I was rushed over to the hospital. Where good old Portage thought that the emergency Room was a little overdoing it, so they placed me in the urgent care waiting room instead. After being in the hospital for about 25 minutes, the urgent care receptionist finally thought that it would be a good idea to give me some ice, so I finally received some form of treatment. About 10 minutes later I was placed in my own comfy little room. 5 minutes after that I finally got to see a doctor. They cleaned everything up, quick checked that my eye hadn’t been permanently injured, quickly grabbed some of the hair that persisted to fall out where ever I walked. And after 20 minutes after that I was on my way home.
But you want to know what is truly funny about this story. After receiving 2nd degree burns to my face that were so serious that if they didn’t heal correctly I would have permanent scarring. And after I almost lost the use of my eye, I was concerned about one thing… “O my Gosh I look like a loser!!!” Where the doctors recommended that I go home and sleep, the next place I told my mom to take me was “Cost Cutters.” Did you see the stupidity when I asked my mom to take me there. After receiving these injuries that had a high possibility of being permanent, the only thing I was concerned about was the things that would easily grow back in due time. My perception of what was truly important was masked by what in the long term (or even two weeks) wouldn’t even be an issue. All because I didn’t want to look different. I wanted to maintain the ability to stay average. The ability to not be looked at weird in the hall-ways of school, and certainly not to be harassed.
My story is a perfect recreation of why teenagers choose to not accept the message that God has so graciously placed before them. John 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Isn’t that amazing? God loves us so much that he gave us his one and only son to die on a cross as our personal sacrifice so that we may have an eternity with him. Even though we did absolutely nothing to deserve it. This message is the single most important message that we will ever hear, yet we, as teenagers, often write it off.
Remember my story? Remember how I only cared about what Society would say about my face as apposed to what was truly important? Teenagers every where are beginning to following this very same path. They are beginning to only care abut what society says about Christianity as apposed to what they feel inside is truly important. The number of teenagers who are being turned away from Christianity because they are scared of what their friends will think is rising at an alarming rate. We need to instill in our youth today a very important message. The message that it is okay to be different. It is okay to look weird to the people around you, as long as you know that you are the normal one, and everyone else is truly the different ones. If we teach this message to our youth it will have an amazing turnout. In this specific case, it is even the difference between eternal life with God and eternal punishment.
Teenagers today have one huge problem. They care way to much about what other people think. I can personally admit to it. The amount of time I have spent caring about what other people thought, as apposed to just being myself is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. We need to start focusing on the choices that we make and not about what people think about them. We need to completely block out the worldly influence in our lives, and only care about the spiritual influence. A pastor once told me that, “your life on earth is like a single spray of aerosol in the entire universe, it doesn’t matter. What does is the choices that you make and the people that you help lead to Christ.” Your life will go on for eternity whether you accept the message or not. You need to make sure that the short spray of life you have on earth is done doing what is truly important. To “Walk the Christian Walk” you need to stop caring about what society says about your actions, and only care about God says.
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