Back to School Shopping

It’s back to school time again, and next weekend is “Tax Free Weekend” here in Texas. That means that on all my back to school supplies, I don’t have to pay any state tax. And so even though my classes are all online, and no one will see how I’m dressed, it’s a perfect excuse to buy those new shoes I’ve been eyeing every time I go to the mall.

They say that “the clothes make the man,” and I do like present myself with a certain style in the way that I dress. However, too often we judge ourselves and others by lots of things that do not actually “make the man.” Clothes and cars, job titles and quarterly earnings are all fine, but they do not define. They don’t make us who we are, only the person on the inside can do that.

Often what happens is that someone challenges one of those things that matters to us, and it is as though they are challenging us. We define ourselves by our grades in school, and then we get a poor grade and all of a sudden we have not merely failed algebra, but we have also failed life. Or even better yet, we have failed to be ourselves because we defined ourselves not as a person but as a grade. I have experienced times when people have said things about something I did, and I took it to apply to myself as a person. The next thing I know, I’m broken over something that was said about one tiny aspect of my life, and not about me as a whole. God wants us to let Him define who we are, as His child that He adores.