Today’s Scripture Reading (February 4, 2018): Romans 12
You are an original. So am I. You were born
with a uniqueness that goes beyond your fingerprints.
From the very moment you were born, your DNA started to create a you that was
unlike any other person ever born. Then you began to experience unique events
in your life and once again, what you experienced created and even more unique
you, a specialness that now extended well beyond your genetic make-up.
At some point, you began to notice negative
things about yourself; you began to
experience those flaws and weak spots that often bother us. We all have them
although, admittedly, some of us are better at hiding them. Some of our weak
spots created points of ill health. And so we needed to protect and strengthen
those areas. But, even then, our efforts were only reinforcing the uniqueness
of who we are.
And then, at some point very early in our
lives, the world started to push back. We felt that we had to conform to everyone else. We had to believe like everyone
else. And part of the problem was that this forcing of us into some random mold happened everywhere. Society began to make
demands on us. Living in community with each other requires that we make some
concessions, but often the shape that the world desired from us went way beyond
what was necessary. We would be ridiculed
and ostracized if we didn’t do things exactly as everyone else did. And the
uniqueness of who we were began to disappear. I remember the moment that I
realized this pattern in my life. I was sitting in math class in grade eleven.
My seat happened to be a window seat overlooking the school’s athletic field, and as my teacher droned on, I
happened to look out my window at a gym class taking advantage of the beautiful,
sunny day. The gym teacher was having the students run laps. Personally, I
hated gym classes where the teacher decided to make me run without the benefit
of chasing after a ball or something; running in circles, to the original
person inside of me, was boring. Apparently,
one student (male) in the gym class had decided the same thing. So while the
rest of his class orderly ran around the track in a clockwise direction, my
kindred spirit was skipping around the track in the opposite direction. If it
was a race, that might have been something that could not have been tolerated. But for a gym class out to get
some exercise, it wasn’t important. And apparently,
the class on the field agreed. I didn’t see anyone try to force this guy to
turn around and run right.
God has created each of us to be an original. Maybe an even better description
is that we are created to be individual puzzle pieces to some gigantic puzzle. But
the only way we can fulfill the will of God is if we are the puzzle piece he intends
us to be, and not trying to disguise ourselves as a different puzzle piece that
the world might want us to be. In fact, the only way that we can test God’s will
in our lives is if we are the original he intended us to be. God’s purpose, no
matter what the church might say, is to release us from the mold of this world
allowing us to be the original he
created.
I get that often we don’t understand that we
are original. I know that I don’t see it in me.
But others seem to see it. They keep on telling me that there is something
different about who I am. But that just means that, hopefully, I am becoming
more comfortable with the original that God created me to be. And, therefore, I
get to be the right puzzle piece for me
and not the one that the world tries to pressure me to be. And if that is true,
then I am okay with that, even if it means that sometimes you will find me
skipping around a field in the opposite direction.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Romans 13
No comments:
Post a Comment