HD or Who I Am Hates Who I've Been

And all my soul needs,
is for your love to cover me.
So all the world will see,
that I am nothing,
without you.

I've been thinking about my little technology experience from a week ago. Something from that conversation keeps gnawing at me.

In the midst of my dealings with underinformed Best Buy employees they dropped a piece of theology on me that I wasn't prepared for. Somehow the conversation was talking about how my TV is HD capable but how if I didn't use the right cords and components, it didn't matter what capability my TV had, if my inputs weren't good my signal would never be HD.

Basically they were telling me that if I didn't have an HD signal coming into my TV what showed up on the screen wouldn't be HD.I could be way off here but it got me to thinking.....

I believe that I and everybody else was created to live life in High Definition. That we have the capability to broadcast to the world crystal clear detail, brilliant color and incredible sound. However the problem isn't the signal itself, its how we get it.

We settle for pirating our signal off someone elses experience. We sit in church on Sunday waiting for the preacher to wow us or fill us with a passion and some tidbit of inspiration we're too lazy to find ourself. We think an experience we read in a book or a proverb we read in an email will empower our soul and spur us on to new heights.

Sometimes it does. For a moment.

I've found myself being a consumer. Trying to read everything, listen to everything and being frustrated when the sermon didn't fill me with fire or the book left me disappointed. I've settled. Not in a way where I was getting a bad signal. It just wasn't all it could be. I was settling for a little blurry, a little washed out. Not totally clear but still you got the general idea. The sad thing was I didn't notice how bad it really was.

I remember when I was looking for my TV I stood in the store and I talked to the knowledgable little fella about signal. I made him show me a TV with HD broadcast and then immediately switch to a less clear signal.

The difference was horrifying.

It's not like the less clear picture sucked. It just missed all the little details, the things that made the picture "pop". I was amazed at how little things, extra details made the thing so much better.

And so I've been looking at my own life, my own picture. Well, not really my picture but the picture of Christ that others see through me. I've discovered I'm less than HD.

And so I've made some changes. I'm tired of some of the old and I'm intersted in some of the new. I've changed what I'm doing with my free time, I've changed what I'm reading or better yet what I'm not reading. Okay, the truth is I'm not reading much of anything except the Bible. I've been guilty of reading everything and bootlegging off of some other dudes insight. Not a bad thing at times, I've done it for the sake of sermons and lessons and at the end of the day I've found that personal growth has resulted in more impact for me and for those I share with. Not that my stuff is better than others--I'm quite sure I'm less than extraordinary. Its more like the signal is just a little clearer and the color a little more brilliant.

I guess what I'm saying is I've come to hate who I've been. I've become selfish, a poor listener, self absorbed, complacent, lazy, ritualistic, a pharisee. It's not like I'm proud of it or like I wanted to end up there. It's simply time to change.

I'm sorry for the person I became.
I'm sorry that it took so long for me to change.
I'm ready to make sure I never become that way again.
Cause who I am hates who I've been, who I am hates who I've been.

So here's to cleaning up our signals. Here's to being honest with ourselves and with God and figuring out what it will take to not water down God but rather get out of the way, and get into Him in such a way that the picture people see is a better representation of the king of the universe.