I think I'm a snob.  I never thought I was before, and people tell me I'm not, but the Lord has been convicting me this summer that, in fact, I'm a snob.  My snobbery has nothing to do with materialism, as my wife and I are on the lower end of middle class, and we still live in a mobile home.  It has nothing to do with talents, because, if anything, I'm more likely to see myself as inadequate in all that I do.  I'm a dream snob.

The Lord is showing me that I am critical, though only to myself and other like minded snobs, of people who don't have what I consider 'big' dreams.  It makes me sad, for example, when kids get married right out of high school, or even right after college.  I consider it almost a moral failure when people want to live in the same place where they grew up.  I silently laugh at people who consider a 100 mile drive to be a long venture.  And deep down, I've always felt the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" was really about a poor sap giving up on his dreams and settling for the status quo.  Not real inspiring when you look at it that way.

You see,I love to be busy, to see new places, do new things and meet new people.  Even though we stay very active in our ministry, including frequent mission trips, I often crave more:  More new experiences, more excitement.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the only right way to live.

So how did the Lord convict me of this sin of snobbery?  It wasn't through a sermon, devotional, or earthquake.  It was through a tee-shirt.  There's a young woman we know, a recent high school graduate, who plans to get married in a year and live in the same rural town she grew up in.  My immediate response is to be both sad and indignant that she has no bigger dreams than that. 

Then I saw her in a 'Walk for Life' tee shirt the other day.  Like a left hook to the jaw, it hit me.  She's walking to benefit the unborn and for single moms right where God has planted her.  Her home town needs people like her, and she wants to be there.  how can that be a bad thing?  Maybe serving God while living within the status quo is just as important as serving God while living out big dreams.

Don't get me wrong.  I still crave our next mission trip, our next visit to prison, and I sure hope our girls really are called to their current big dreams of missions work.  But I can no longer believe that people who want to quietly serve God and others while never straying too far from home, or doing anything more unconventional than a walk-a-thon, are immature, or wrong, or missing out on anything. For people who find their dream is to serve joyfully within the status quo, it really is a wonderful life.