Youth Blog

So, we’re coming to the end of our Art of Connecting course.
To Recap:

My Story - we each have a story of our own, the overall story of our lives and our testimony of how God has been active and how we have met with Him.
Their Story - all of our friends have their own stories to tell, the experiences that they have had in life, the lessons they have learned and so on.
God’s Story - History is His Story, we know how throughout the ages God has connected with His creation right up today where He connects with us and wants to connect with our friends.

My Story is connected to God’s Story, but also to Their Story. Therefore if I go deeper into God’s Story - getting to know Him better and letting Him transform my life - and deeper into My Friend’s Story - building up our friendship, being there for them - then I will inevitably draw Their Story into God’s Story too.

To me, this leaves the simple question - how’s your art? Because art requires effort. An artist can’t half heartedly hold paint and a canvas and hope to see a masterpiece appear. They have to make a real effort.
How much effort are you putting into deepening your connection to God’s Story?
How much effort are you putting into deepening your connection to Their Story?
When you put your effort into these two things, you will be able to step back and see the finished picture - God knowing them, them knowing God.
Let’s look forward to, and put effort into, these masterpieces

I have recently become aware of a band called Bluetree and I have found out a few things about them, but one thing that has particularly stood out to me is the band’s name and the meaning behind it. During an interview with a representative of the Christian Music Community Cross Rhythms, the lead singer Aaron Boyd explained where the name came from and I wanted to share it with you:

“Bluetree stands for standing out. The whole concept of that is that, if you’re walking through a forest, everything you look around at is pretty much going to be green; green trees, brown branches, brown bark: you know, that kind of thing? But if you saw this tree that was bright blue and everything about it - leaves, branches, bark - was blue, it would stand out and you would stand and look at it and take notice of it. As Christians, Jesus Christ has called us to be salt, be light, in this world and really make a difference. So we want to go around and inspire kids to stand out whether that is in church or school.”

So I guess my thought is, when people see us or think of us, do we seem like a blue tree to them? Something that stands out as different in a world where everything else is the same. Because that’s what Jesus calls us to - salt, light in the darkness, a city on a hill.

Because I would love to be described as a blue tree like this

[There will be a copy of their album ‘Greater Things’ added to the CD Library, so if you would like to have a listen, it will be there from Sunday. And it delights me to have found out that they will be playing at Adoration :-D]