Thursday, September 16, 2010

Someone's Always Watching

It's true, you know. I was making some updates to our church website this afternoon and I happened to click on the stats button. The first graph that appeared showed how many unique visitors come to our site each day, and I was surprised at what I saw. It's easy to think no one is looking, no one is watching, but it can be mind-blowing when you see the data. The same is true with this whole blogging thing sometimes - often, like now, I'm sitting by myself in an almost empty coffee shop, tapping away at my computer, not even thinking about the fact that others will actually read what I write. And then someone I barely know makes a passing comment about something I said on my blog and I think, "wow, did I really put that out there for strangers to read?"

Sometimes we start believing that it doesn't really matter what we do, what we say, how we act, how we react, etc., etc. But it does, someone is always watching.

It might be your kids... We think they're so caught up in their own world that they don't notice the little things, but they do. My 19-month old is in the parrot stage where he repeats everything he hears - it is a constant, and sometimes not so flattering, reminder that someone is not only watching but listening. I read in a book recently, "Our personal relationship with God and with our spouse make a bigger difference than we think in our kid's lives." Our kids are watching, what are we teaching them when we don't think they're paying attention?

It might be your parents... Here's an example: when I'm on facebook, I'm primarily interacting with people my age and younger. Sometimes I'm not thinking and I put silly things on my status, and then my mom calls and asks me about something going on in my life that I know I didn't tell her about - that's right, she's on facebook too. (I met a youth pastor recently who said one of his favorite Sunday morning activities with his students is to throw facebook up on the big screen and then pick random profiles to open for everyone to look at - yikes!)

It might be the person you ate lunch with who looked to see how big of a tip you left... I know we throw this fact out there all the time, but it's true that you can talk to all kinds of restaurant waiters and waitresses and they'll tell you they hate working on Sundays b/c the after-church crowd are some of the worst tippers of the week.

People are watching. What are they learning from your life?

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