Bubble Poppin’

During the summer and Christmas breaks of my freshmen and sophomore years of college, I worked at a preschool. On my favorite days, I got to work in the nursery with the babies. The babies are the easiest to entertain of any of the age groups, but if they get upset, they are the hardest to pacify. One trick I learned early on to calm a crying baby is to blow bubbles. Babies love bubbles. They are enthralled by them. When I blew bubbles at the preschool, every child put down his or her toys and came over to me to chase, step on, catch, and pop the bubbles. It made me think of a movie I used to love when I was younger. The princess was washing clothes and the bubbles from the soap floated up into the air. Inside the bubbles, she could see images, pictures of her parents, her friends, and her enemies. As she watched, each bubble popped erasing the picture with a small shower of soapy water. Sometimes, I am so surrounded by my bubbles; I forget that there is more to life outside of my bubbles. Many people refer to Freed-Hardeman as a bubble and it is in so many ways. When I am here, it is hard for me to keep up with the outside world. I keep up with my family and my friends, but it is easy for me to forget that not everyone lives as I do. Not everyone gets to go to a Christian college in a small town in Tennessee. Not everyone is surrounded by Christian friends. Not everyone has several churches to choose from on Sundays.

The past couple of days I got the chance to pop some bubbles. I went to a children’s home this morning to do “manual labor.” The people at the home were expecting about 15 workers and we brought about 50 so while some people worked, others got a chance to hang out with the kids at the home. Some friends and I talked to three of the girls for a long time and it was amazing to see how odd they thought we were. They could not believe that we did not drink, smoke, or do drugs. One girl was embarrassed when another was cussing in front of us, because they knew we do not say that stuff. Another girl talked to us about how she got high and ran away from home. Another about how she will steal the house phone to talk to her boyfriend. They live less than 10 minutes away from Freed-Hardeman, but their world is nothing like mine. Another night this week, I was talking to a good friend of mine who is 13. She told me about her friend who was going to “get screwed” by her boyfriend, but that is just “how things roll at my school.” We began talking and I realized that she did not think anything about having sex before you are married. She told me I was “so old school” for even suggesting that it was wrong. This is a girl who grew up in the same town as me, went to the same youth events I did, and the same church camp I go to every summer, but she is in a completely different bubble than I am.

Jesus had His bubbles too. He had His chosen twelve apostles. He had Peter, James, and John that He took with Him to the Garden of Gethsemane. He had parents on earth, and brothers and sisters. He had friends like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. But Jesus was not afraid to pop His bubbles. He was not afraid to leave His bubbles and go talk to sinners, Gentiles, Samaritans, the sick, the hurt, anyone who needed Him. We have to be willing to pop our bubbles, go to the others, and see what is happening in their bubbles.