Except You and Me

There is this old one liner that goes, "Everyone here is crazy except me and you.  And frankly I'm not sure about you." We always use ourselves as the measuring stick of rational behavior.  Anyone who deviates from the mold that we have made is a bit different.  A friend once was telling me about an argument that he was having with his girlfriend at the time.  She said to him, "Why can't you just be normal?" His response was. "I thought I was normal.  It seems like it's everyone else that has a problem." Maybe we all feel that way a bit.

So the term "normal" seems to be up for interpretation.  When I had a psychology class in college, the professor asked us to define "normal".  We quickly came to definition relating to the behavior that the majority of people would do in a particular circumstance.  Which brought his next question, "If most people would cheat on their taxes, does that make an honest person abnormal"?  So normal isn't that easy.

I live in a small town.  Now I'm not sure if people in every small town feel this way, but in this town it feels like we have an above average number of characters per capita.  I once pointed this out to a friend saying, "Doesn't it seem like there are a lot of odd people living in this town?" He said, "Well, you would know about odd." I'm not sure what he meant by that.

Everyone has something that makes us unique.  So in some ways, being different is the most "normal" thing that anyone can do.  In the book of first Peter, God's people are described as being peculiar.  And in many ways we are.  But peculiar does not just mean odd, though there can be plenty of that.  No, peculiar means special.  Peculiar means set apart from the rest in a special way that makes it important.  If you think about it, you don't out any old ordinary rock into a collection.  You are looking for the one that stands out,

God's people are peculiar.

Watch this clip from Pastor Lowell.

God sets His people apart.  We are set apart to impact this world in a different sort of way.  We are set apart to let Godá love shine through us,  In that case, being a peculiar people isn't so bad after all.