Don’t you hate that new kid on the block feeling?  I like knowing where I stand; what I’m doing; who the players are.  There are times in life that we feel like aliens on our own planet, foreigners in our own country, guests in our own home.

As a child I loved watching cartoons on Saturday mornings and one of my favorite shows was X-Men.  The show was about a group of people born with super powers that were special, but society would label as freaks if they did not conceal their identity.  Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, Storm, were all fighting to save a humanity that did not fully understand or accept them.

The longer I live my life following God, the more I realize I am a stranger to the world around me.  1 Peter 2:11a address Christ followers like this: “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world…”  Jesus did not ask us to lead a comfortable life in which the entirety of the planet adored and embraced us for our commitment to Him.  He, in fact, promised quite the opposite.  So why bother?

We bother because of what Peter says in the verses prior to verse 11, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

God has chosen me for greatness.  He has chosen you for greatness.  The Bible says that this amazing calling will not come easily, but ask yourself this: did the things in life that we yearned for the most, come without challenge?  If you desire an incredible, unparallelled life following Christ, prepare yourself to become a strange to the world and a child of God.