Have you ever been on the “outside” of things?  Remember when certain ones were chosen last to be on teams in their childhood?  It was usually the same person all the time.  We all want to belong, sometimes desperately.  How sad it is for those who want to be on the “inside” and are held on the “outside”.  Wouldn’t it be grand if there were a place where who you were didn’t make a bit of difference to those who were there, and there you would be accepted, loved and even adored?  There is!

It’s the family of God, a community of believers, who because of what was done for them, would do anything for you.  People want to be valued – to know they were here for a reason – that is what fellowship is all about – to bestow honor upon those who expect it the least – a community where one is treated and treats others better than any place on earth.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” I John 4:11 (NIV).

A Child of the King

By Lou David Allen

I stumbled and fell right down,
Silly me, I hate to be a clown.
I was hurt, I knew, really bad,
They all laughed and I was sad.
Mocking, “ You can stand if you try!”
But, all I could do was sit and cry.
So completely embarrassed by it all,
Why did I have to go and fall?
I hung my head in shame,
And thought, “It’s all me to blame.”
Then I heard someone sweetly say,
“Have you hurt yourself, are you O.K.?”
No, it couldn’t possibly be true!
The most popular girl in my school,
Sitting here, by my side,
Unwounding my broken pride.
Afterwards, all agreed she had done me a kindly thing.
But I think more.
I think they had seen a child of the King.

“Christians are horrible, they are so mean.”

Not only is this sentiment too common today, but these were the words I heard from one of our varsity basketball players this morning.  We had just finished a win over a Christian school who’s crowd began a personal verbal attack on the player over perceived rough defense.  The 15 year-old player was left reeling from a crowd of adults screaming at her. As I overheard her talking to her mother on the phone, the words of dissappointment stung with each syllable.

“Christians are supposed to be the best, but they are the worse.”

Unfortunately this was the second Christian school in as many days who had behaved in a similar manner.  I must confess my own behavior has not always been exemplary during close and heated games.  The words this morning stung because it brought home how much my behavior represents Christ, too often in a negative way.

The United States went through a phase of t-shirts, bracelets, and other Christian merchandise that challenged us to ask”What Would Jesus Do?”  or “WWJD?” when confronted with a decision.  Apart from the superficial nature of t-shirt Christianity, I wonder if we would have been better served challenging believers to “LLJD” or “live like Jesus did.”  I’m sure there was no room in Jesus’ life for screaming at a 15 year-old basketball player no matter how hard the foul.

The Bible is at times so grand and the plot so complex it’s sometimes difficult for most of us to gather details about God’s will for us.  We rely on scholars and theologians to interpret  passages but because of disagreement among scholars we are forced to choose which we feel is most correct.  That’s why it’s good to take an overview of the scriptures to discern the context; I describe this view as a “helicopter view.”

During my time in the Army, situations on the ground became much clearer when viewed from a position that permitted a view of the entire operation, not just one small perspective on the ground.  This was done by finding high terrain, using unmanned arial vehicles (UAV), or jumping in a helicopter and seeing first hand the big view.  This helicopter view is important when studying single scriptures to better understand the intent of the writer at that time to the recipients.   The same can be said concerning the complete collection of biblical collection of writings.  So what’s the story?

Picture God in your mind…

If you’re like most of the people I’ve asked, you probably thought of some combination of a man in a gray beard floating on a throne in the clouds or a scowling judge glaring down from his judgment bench.  Both are totally wrong.  God has a presence in the world today, and how we see Him will determines how we see ourselves and how we see others.

Before we can establish how to see God today we need to explore how he was seen in the past.  Bible accounts paint a picture of a God who made himself visibly present; initially for His benefit an eventually for ours.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day….”   (Gen 3:8 NIV).  I love to imagine what it was like in the garden of God when He physically walked among and enjoyed the beauty of his creation.   To think about enjoying the presence of my creator in the unsurpassed beauty of his newly created earth is overwhelming to me.

In the garden that day Adam and Eve could not be found because they were hiding from God.  They knew they had disobeyed and were ashamed of themselves and their appearance.   This was the moment that separated us from God, but also set into motion a plan to redeem his creation and reestablish the perfection of His dwelling place. From that moment on God manifested Himself in various forms.

Down where we live it doesn’t snow much.  When it does, we love it, well, most of us.  The kids hope with the snow comes a snow day away from school.  Most folks never lose their wonder at snow’s beauty and its nature of covering the most unsightly sights.  Even a junkyard takes on a beauty not its own when snow falls and covers the old cars.  Snow! Snow is a transformer of the ugly to the beautiful.

Lewis Carroll had Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” describe snow to her kitty this way.

“Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty?  How nice and soft it sounds!  Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside.  I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, and that it kisses them so gently?  And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ’Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’  And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about – whenever the wind blows – oh, that’s very pretty!” cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands.  “And I do so wish it was true!  I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.”

One day long ago, my buddy and I decided to drive his old car across a dry creek bed. A fun idea turned out to be a bad idea.  Half way over, we sunk deep in the gravel.  Everything we tried to get unstuck did not work.  Idea after idea failed.  Our “horse” was stuck, for sure and for certain.  Evening was coming on and our options were walking home or going to someone’s house and calling home.  In those days there were no cell phones.  Both plans were not acceptable to a couple of enterprising fellows like us.  Either option spelled defeat.  Of course, we were, in fact, completely defeated.  By now my mom, who kept close tabs on me, even though I considered that not needful, had dispatched my dad to check on the whereabouts of her number one and only son.  And there he was, in his company car, coming over the hill with the radio antenna whipping in the wind.  My hero, then and now, and always will be.  “What are you boys doing,” he asked. We replied as manly as we could,  “We’ve tried everything and we can’t get unstuck.”  He didn’t laugh or even chastise us for what we had done as I recall.  He had a way of teaching without saying one word.  He simply said, “Take some air out of the tires”.  We did and Ronny drove out easily.  Ronny and I learned a big lesson that day, and it was more than how to get a stuck car out of a creek.

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:37-40 (NLT)

I love this video and you’ve probably seen it many times.  As you watch it again consider if our culture has changed our self-image and devalued the love we have for ourselves.  If we don’t love ourselves how can we love our neighbor?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.