My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. – John 17:15

 Today's Scripture Reading (January 1, 2021): John 17

There are essentially two ways to protect something. One way is to wrap it up in some kind of protective garment. People who play physical sports like American Football or Hockey are used to playing the game wearing padding. It protects them, at least somewhat, from the damage that could happen to the human body if the game were to be played without padding. In hockey, the lucky person who minds the goal or skates "between the pipes" is blessed with even more padding. The padding a goalie wears is thicker and broader, covering more area of the body, all to protect the person trying to stop a hard rubber disk being fired at them, sometimes at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour.

But there is another way to protect a person from the damage resulting from playing a sport like American Football or Hockey. That solution is to play chess, or maybe poker. It is the solution of most mothers; please just don't play the game. Because if you don't play, you can't get hurt. (Just as an aside, that is not necessarily true. I remember one Football game in which I was playing where a few spectators sitting on the sideline got so interested in the conversation that they were having that they forgot that there was a game going on. When a play happened to go in their direction, there was a great collision between the ones wearing the pads and the bystanders who weren't.)  It is this latter way of protecting something that is the underlying theory of every person who "child proofs" a room before allowing a toddler into it. The idea is that if everything breakable has been removed, then the child can't cause any damage.

Jesus prays for the protection of his followers. But he does not pray that God would remove them from the world. There are times when we might wish that we had prayed for our removal. I remember having a conversation with a cousin of mine on a tough day, and he flipped open his wallet, maybe because he thought it looked like an old-style Star Trek communicator, and issued the words "Beam me up, Scotty." During rough moments in this life, sometimes the concept of being removed from this troubled planet is an attractive prospect.

But Jesus's prayer was not that we would be removed from this world, but that we would be protected from the schemes of Satan, the evil one. The reality is that we are supposed to be the difference makers in this world, and we cannot be difference makers if we are not present in it. Jesus said that we are to be salt and light in this world. But salt that stays in the salt shaker is just an ornament for the dinner table; it is of no practical use. A light that is never placed in a dark room can never bring light to the darkness.

This is who we are supposed to be. Jesus wants us to be protected, but he also wants us in the game, making a difference. As another year dawns, we have another chance in front of us to be the difference makers that Jesus wants us to be.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Matthew 27