Authority comes with responsibility

Just this past week, the new young teen movie High School Musical 2 came out. I watched it here at home, and i thought it was a cute movie. It got me thinking to my high school days. That was 5 years ago already! That's not fair! lol. But it brought back some memories...

All my years of going through school, i was never one of the popular people so much. You might be thinking "Seeing what what you say here on your blog, i can imagine why.." and you might have a point there. But I've realized one important thing over there years: Your actions can speak louder than your words. People are watching you even when you don't think they are. And it usually happens that your misdoings go noticed much quicker than your good things.

I've come to realize that i did have a good bit of authority actually in high school. People knew me and they knew that i stood for something. With that comes a lot of responsibility. Some time ago, my mom ran into an old school friend. this friend moved into our town when she was in 3rd or 4th grade. her family was missionaries in Indonesia for a number of years. We were in some of the same classes in elementary school. I'm not totally sure what happened to her after elementary school. I can't even say that i remember seeing her much at all in middle school and then in high school. I know she was still around there, but I don't remember having much contact with her at all. From what i can remember though, she was still there and i think we even graduated together. My graduating class in high school was in the low hundreds from what i can remember.

In any case, my mom had mentioned that recently, she ran into this girl at the store. My mom didn't know her from anyone, but someone she recognised my mom, i guess with my last name and she took a chance of a relation. And she even asked about me. My mom filled her in briefly as to what i was up to. And she said that in her high school days, she went through a time of really just questioning God. But she mentioned that she remembered me and remembered what a firm stance i took.

Thats humbling for me. Sometimes you just never know what kind of an impact your making. With this comes a good amount of responsibility. A responsibility to keep your life clean. If and when people are looking up to you to represent Christ, that gives you an amount of responsibility and authority in their life. However, that needs to be handled with care. It's not something to lord it over w/, but to be used humbly. Keeping ones life clean isn't always easy.