Inked For Jesus

I've become a regular reader of Stuff Christians Like (a very cool blog for Christians who are willing to laugh at the dumb stuff Christians sometimes do).

They recently held a contest for "christian tattoos."

This is awesome to me for alot of reasons:
1. I've always wanted a tattoo but always been a big chicken.
2. You have to admire someone who believes something strongly enough to put it on their skin permanently.
3. Those little moisten and press tattoos always start to fade when you take a bath.
4. Most church goers would probably be shocked to see how many other church goers have little tattoos on parts of their bodies that they don't tend to let other church goers see.

But probably most significantly because of a friend of mine that God used to shatter some of my old boxes, paradigms, and prejudices. The first time I met this guy, let's call him KJ (wink, wink), I was working for YouthWorks and I had about 40 college students that I supervised as they led high school youth on summer mission trips. The very first thing I noticed about KJ was that his forearms and calves were pretty much completely covered with tattoos. Then I looked up and realized that KJ had at least a dozen piercings...just on his face. To be perfectly honest, my immediate gut reaction was, "Clearly this guy was a phone interview hire."

Long story short, KJ turned out to be one of the most insightful, compassionate, full of integrity, faithful and committed Christ followers I've ever met in my entire life. I learned so much from KJ. I still do. He is an amazing youth pastor and God is using him in deep ways. The guy flat out rocks my face off.

But what I love about KJ's tattoos is that they are all very intentional. They say something and that something is purposeful.

I think of that and then I ask, what am I doing on purpose to say something to the world in which I live? What am I doing that purposefully says something about what I think, what I am, what I believe?

If I'm honest, I'm usually more concerned with trying to hide the fact that I work for Jesus because I want people to get to know me before they write me off.

My friend KJ is quite content to just be who he is. And that impresses me.

Maybe one day, my own personal evolution will take me to the point of being willing to be purposeful about letting people know who I am and what I am about.