What happened to because?

Amongst the steam of the espresso machine, the anxiety sighs of test minded college students, and garbage magazines sits a man reading Hemingway amongst a dozen chocolate wrappers. Besides his 10 year cargo pants and 60's sporting cap, this man is wearing the things in life he enjoys, he is wearing simplicity. As his friend tries to converse with him over his Machiatto, this man continues to read hoping that with the next turn of his page his friend will leave him to his literature.

Amongst a world of doing things because [insert worldly reasoning here]…..he is doing things because he enjoys it. What happened to enjoying a book because of the beauty that is the story, and not the end grade, what happened to intentional conversation, because the desire to learn about someones heart is greater than the need to fill an empty time gap of words, what happened to because?

I'm learning the beauty that is in the things that my heart loves and doing them because of the joy it gives me alone. Why waste another second doing something not worth while when you can spend it doing something that YOU want to do because it's what you want to do. How has the world completely made us feel like if we don't live by their rules we're wasting time or doing something wrong. NO. I mean the Lord gave us each unique and beautiful things that only OUR hearts desire, so living by the rules of the world will NEVER fill the desires of our hearts and will ALWAYS leave us unsatisfied. God wrote the rules, and the world is trying to break them, yet we are slow to call them out on it. So maybe no one will understand why i love sitting at central market on a saturday morning with my best friend who is almost a decade older than me, when i could be catching up on my non existent sleep, maybe no one will understand my desire to live in Angola, Africa amongst a people group that could kill me tomorrow, maybe no one will ever understand why i'd take a drive to Alaska and back just to say i did it despite the gas and the tests i have the next week, and maybe no one will understand how a mid 70's year old man would compel me to start writing despite the 5 chapters of homework i need to read….but i desire it because….because just that, The Lord put it there and this life is way too short to waste it filling it with what the world says is needed.

 "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him." -1 john 3:1

I am a child of God, i am unique, i am not like his other children, so i will not live like his other children, because i am not them, i am me. The world might not understand my life, but it's because i am not living by their standards.  I'm living by His.