Kindergarten Cool

Kindergarten Cool

Apparently one skeleton on your shirt isn't enough. You have to be simply covered in them. I didn't know this until I read this important observation on facebook. A friend of mine was relaying her confusion about the apparent rules of kindergarten coolness. Her little boy had come home from school that day having been found wanting. He didn't have enough skeletons on his shirt and, unfortunately, that day it was the coolness meter. Poor little guy. I happen to know for a fact that this kid is great and the mother in me wanted to march into his classroom the next day and inform those miniature social snobs that nobody's cool in kindergarten. They're six-year-olds for crying out loud.
It did get me thinking about adults and their standards for acceptability. Skeletons seemed laughably silly to me, but what about us? Adults do it, too, and our criteria doesn't make a lot more sense. I have noticed that even with Christians a touch of cynicism seems to be required to keep from being a bore. Being edgy enough to use a cuss word now and then means you're not a total dork who doesn't understand how to function in society. Of course there are always money and possessions to let everyone know we are to be envied. Beauty, too. Everyone knows the best looking people are a little better. 
Such foolishness. I shook my head when I read about my friend's son and his skeleton deficiency, but I wonder if God sees it any differently if I'm afraid that someone will think less of me because of my lack of smartphone or my never manicured nails. I'll bet He shakes His head, too, when we think that our cars or houses or intimidating intelligence give us status. Look what He told Samuel as he looked over Jesse's sons to find the new king. Surely it would be the tall good-looking guy, right? “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
I mean this to encourage you, because there will always be someone with more skeletons on their shirt than you have on yours. But it doesn't matter at all. Only one thing is important and we can choose what is better.