Each generation wants to be different than the one that raised them up. Each wants to redefine what “normal” means.

To verify this, simply compare your generation to the generation of ten or twenty years ago. Things that seem normal in today’s culture may be far from normal, evaluated from a perspective that is ten to twenty years earlier in time.

Often we are so busy questioning things that make us uncomfortable we don’t allow ourselves to appreciate the vast differences within our current generation. Yet such differences are always emerging and redefining the new normal…

So, what is normal, anyways?

According to Webster, normal means “usual or ordinary, typical; the expected condition.”

It would seem that this definition assumes a point of reference. Isn’t “normal” always being measured against current standards? For instance, we would not classify current hairstyles to the standards of those in the eighties, right? (Excluding people who are trying to bring back the mullet).

How we define “normal” is always moving.

Think of it like this: If “normal” is always shifting faster than our interpretation of “normal” then we must give way to understanding both how we arrive at (interpret) normal, and how we are willing to investigate, acknowledge, and accept a continuously emerging “normal.”

We humans are naturally self-aware -- conscious of our own character, feelings, desires, and motives. Our world, and how we accept the norms of the day, is always being evaluated through our personal lens -- from a self-perspective. God, however, is continually working in the midst of our circumstances to help us see through a different lens -- that of Christ.

It’s only from the perspective of the God-man, Jesus, that we can see who we really are. This can be a painful realization because what we repeatedly see as right-side-up might actually be upside-down. And what feels normal with our state of self-awareness, God desires to continually shift and change so that Christ-awareness is being made manifest within us.

We are so quick to want to point out how others are different than we are. We try to alienate them and exclude them from our “normal.” Maybe it’s in how they dress, whether they have money or not, who they choose as friends, their theological position, their sexual orientation, whether they are tech-geeks or not, or even based on to which political party they belong (the list could go on and on…).

But what if we were able to celebrate our many differences?

It seemed that Jesus was able to see beyond what we see -- He was able to see the human heart. If “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose,” (Romans 8:28, NLT) then isn’t God indeed at work in an ever shifting and emerging normal?

Maybe instead of condemning our differences we should be celebrating them and realize that God is at work in them… Perhaps this is the bedrock for what it means to become “relational.”

Sometimes we are so busy worrying about others that we miss what Jesus wants us to see within ourselves -- something He might be putting His finger on… So then wouldn’t “normal” be to allow God to produce more Christ-awareness in you and I?

I want to see myself the way Jesus sees me… I want to see others the way Jesus sees others… I want to reach out with the Hands that first reached to me…

Shouldn't this always be the emerging normal?