Normal

Politicians are trying to fit into the mold their pollster tells them will win the next election.  People just entering the work stream dress right, talk right, and even try to manage their career in the right time, industry, and sequence.  There is enough momentum going on that I wonder just how badly I am going to lose!  I am not plugged into anything resembling traditional norms.  Perhaps that is just what I want to think.
 
In my younger days we talked about corporate uniforms.  Each company had a, usually unspoken, set of dress and behavior standards that one spent considerable effort first getting to know and then working to fit within.  I cannot recall anyone seriously challenging the way things were.  Maybe the random act but nothing sustained, directly confrontational, or blatantly rebellious.  I went to work at my first job with a conservative tie, dark suit, white shirt, lace-up leather shoes because that is what I was supposed to do.  I radically cut my hair (shoulder length to off the collar and ears) for the same reasons.  I desperately wanted to fit in and be normal!  Nothing was going to get in my way.
 
Yet real winning is not about fitting in.  Being in the game, getting everything that life has to offer, comes from being true to one’s mission, purpose, and direction.  Rules can be dammed.  Norms were made to be broken.  Boundaries are for those who cannot and often do not think.  People who win often end up on a different path.
 
Jesus was accused.  “They were trying to trap him into saying something incriminating so they could bring charges against him.  Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt.”  (John 8.6) 
 
Bluntly this wasn’t the norm.  This wasn’t what the accusers expected him to do.  You and I will be attacked from all sides today.  Be open to God’s direction.  It may not be expected, it will come, and the direction may be way outside the norm.  You may not know compassion, mercy, and love are like that.