A Different Kind Of Shooting

We love because he first loved us.   If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  1 John 4:19-20

I have a confession to make.  I don’t watch the news or read the newspaper.  I realize that doesn’t make me informed or worldly and I also realize there are some who would say I’m sticking my head in the sand but I’m ok with that.  I can’t change the world, I can only be in charge of my little corner of it; myself, my family and maybe on a great day my classroom of middle lovelies.  That’s it…that’s all I can do and I have to leave the rest up to God to tend to.  I choose instead to pray for my town, my state, my country and my world.  There is such a need for prayer in all those places I don’t need to know the particulars; I just know I need to pray. That being said, I do often notice my internet home page headlines and the one about the shooting in Virginia Wednesday broke my heart. The words that are ringing in my heart are senseless shooting.  Talk about the understatement of the decade!  I just can’t seem to shake those words so I decided to change them into a concept that could make sense and make a difference.

What if we turned next week into National Positive Shooting Week?  I’ll admit it’s not very catchy and it doesn’t roll of your tongue but let me share the idea anyway.  The first thing to understand is the word shooting.  As the title implies, it’s all about shooting stuff at people but it’s positive stuff, great stuff, important, kind, purposeful stuff.  What if we spent a whole week trying to shoot positive emails, texts, Facebook posts and tweets?  What if we decided to pick three people and shoot them a note with two 5 dollar bills in it and asked them to keep one and share the other?  What if we shot the person in line behind us at the coffee shop or toll booth a surprise and paid for them?  What if we decided to find ten people each day and shoot them a beautiful smile?  What if we made a list of people who were sick, suffering or struggling and shot up a special prayer for each of them?  Do you see where I’m going with this?  Can you imagine what a difference it could make!  I won’t un-do the bad stuff going on around us but it would allow us to create an atmosphere of Christ like love that can offer a counter balance to the crazy stuff going on in our world.  We can’t change the world but we can sure shoot around some better stuff in our little corner of it.

Is it Pollyanna simple; you bet, but in our over the top, complicated, fast paced world a little simple might just do something amazing!  So pull out your post-its and your sharpie and shoot some positive messages out.  Leave them on desks, car windows, lunch bags, water bottles; anywhere!  If National Doggy Day can blow up everyone’s Facebook newsfeed surely this can have an impact too.  Each week more than 3,000 readers visit this blog and if each reader decided to shoot out three or four positive messages imagine how cool that would be.  I’m sure it won’t make the homepage newsfeed or the 6 o’clock news but it will make a difference and Christ will notice!

A Seed To Plant: In the next couple of days pray about how Christ might be inviting you to shoot out some of his love and Good News.

Blessings on your day!