God thinks I'm funny.

I often find myself making uncanny comments, or partaking in some random offbeat activity on account of my overconfident sense of my own hilarity. Simply said, I think I'm funny. However, others generally think I'm a bit off to put it sweetly.

For instance--I will write mass emails for sorority business or just to my friends and end up by myself giggling at my desk as I come up with what to type. Or, the other day, my friend Meredith sent me a text simply asking if our copy machine worked at our sorority house. Being that I live there, I responded with an obvious, "I'll make a copy of my butt and check." Apparently, my message was sent too late. I snuck in the copy room, shut the door, pulled down my wind shorts, propped my leg up on the counter and sat down right on the glass scanner of the copy machine. Little did I know that 5 seconds later, Meredith and her friend Bren would walk into the copy machine and catch me. She screamed and humiliated, I mumbled an ashamed, "Oh No!" and the door slammed shut. There I was, caught in my own mortification, just trying to be funny... and funny it was, but at my expense.

Needless to say, my "funniness" seems to be fairly conditional.

That night at Bible Study we happened to be talking about Galatians 1:10 " Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men?"

I thought about that, and I just could not help at that moment caring what they thought of me. I had my pants down in a copy room with my butt on the machine. As much as we often do not want to care about the approval of others, we are still human. We care. We live in a world that is conditioned to survival by the validation of others, whether it is our parents, our professors, or our bosses. We get somewhere by being "good" in the sight of someone.

I've rarely had a boy think I was funny. I used to care too--I would be upset that boys just think I'm some oddball. They liked hanging out with me okay, but I think it is because I generally had cute friends (or maybe because I rapped the whole "Gangsta's Paradise" in my 5th grade talent show.) But when I heard that verse about gaining the approval of God, (maybe not right when I heard it, but at least by the tenth time) I realized that it does not matter what those boys think. Who am I trying to gain the approval of? Some silly 9th grade boys? There only has to be one boy who ever thinks I'm funny, and that is my husband (I already know God thinks I'm funny.)

Why are we so concerned with what others think of us? I fall into this lie that we have to be acceptable to others all the time. When God says... you don't need the approval of man, you need my approval, and you have it the minute you believe in me. And that means I'm not going to fail you, and I'm not going to think you're funny sometimes, but all the time. Alright lame example, but God loves us no matter what. He likes us all the time. Even when we screw up. Our friends will fail us, our parents will fail us, our jobs will fail us. One thing that won't is God.

So maybe people don't think I'm hilarious and probably even think I'm weird. But God thinks I'm funny and he even likes me for it.