Followers

I really thought he was pretty full of himself.  Not that I could criticize him publically.  The apostle Paul, that is.  I mean, what kind of false modesty says, “I could boast about [having this impressive pedigree/suffering this much for Christ/having been so bad before salvation].  But I won’t.”  Sure, Paul, my young teenage mind was thinking. 

And then I got to know Paul.

It happened in high school.  After my friend Erica convinced me to join the Bible quiz team and I fell head-over-heels-in-love with the adrenaline of the quiz process.  But on another level, I fell in love with the depth acquired by the intensity of that length and breadth of study.  To know the passage, not just a verse here or there, but whole chapters.  In fact, whole sets of chapters.  To memorize.  To meditate. To ponder.  To understand on a whole new plane.  And I still have that knowledge; I can give you chapter content for most of the books of John or Corinthians or Acts. (In honest retrospection, it was the single most valuable thing I learned in high school.  To my chagrin I no longer memorize Scripture like I once did.)  Anyway, it was during these Bible quiz years that I met Paul. 

Once I got to know him—really know him—I realized that he wasn’t quite as uppity as I had imagined him.  I grew to really respect him.  To understand why when Agabus foretold his capture in Jerusalem it caused his friends to literally weep.  And also why in the end they were willing to let him go, saying only, “The will of the Lord be done.”  I wish I could have been present at one of the sermons he preached.

Eventually, the pompous presumptiveness I attributed to his command in I Corinthians 11:1 was replaced with awe at the audacious responsibility he was willing to assume when he said, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”

And I realized that though Christ is our ultimate source, sometimes we need a human role model to help us understand how it looks in real life.  Yesterday we sang happy birthday to my husband, and he was sweetly amused to see our two-year-old son singing along a few beats behind everyone else (since he doesn’t know the words himself yet).  Hesitatingly, he reached the “dear so-and-so” part of the song, watched me closely, then plunged away with “Dear Stee-eeve.”  Normally we don’t let him call us by our first names, but it was obvious he was just being a follower of all the adults singing the song.  We couldn’t help ourselves; we burst out laughing!  Our children know perfectly how to follow us.  They want to be just like us.  They wear our shoes, mimic our occupations, use our word phrases and expressions, hold their cups just like we do.

And we need to be like them spiritually and find role models to follow, too.  Maybe you will find someone at your church.  Or a relative.  Maybe an admired saint in a biography you’ve read.  But—and this is key--to the extent that they follow Christ, then aim to be just like them.  I have my list: a short one and a long one.  And work so that you, like Paul, will be able to say to others, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”

Spiritual Allergies

Last night I was reading one of those ubiquitous baby magazines that habitually arrive in my mailbox.  One of the articles covered allergies, and I was interested in the current prevailing wisdom since this seems to be increasingly common on today’s baby scene.  Sure enough, peanut allergies have tripled in the last 10 years and lots of other allergies are now more common than before.  There are no end of opinions on why this is happening and what to do about it, but it was the final paragraph of the article that really caught my attention.  It proposed a lack of exposure to dirt and germs as a possible culprit.  “The theory behind the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ is that kids today grow up in a too-clean environment, leaving their immune systems idle, so they start fighting off harmless substances.”¹ (They obviously have never looked under my car seats!) 

While we were singing in church this morning about the cross and what Christ accomplished for us there, I suddenly realized that my struggles with “petty” things might be because of my own “too clean environment.”  As modern American Christians, we strive to limit our exposure to the spiritual dirt and germs of the world.  In our middle-class comfort we often don’t struggle for the resources to meet our basic needs.  Sure, there is always something else we’d like to spend money on, and certainly there are spiritual battles being fought in my house on a daily basis.  But hearing that there are 40 bars or taverns in my small town of 20,000 people sobered me to a side of life I don’t see or interact with all that often.  Thinking of the cross makes me wonder if intensive parenting days are really all that horrible by comparison.  Really. 

And all these thoughts circling in my brain make me wonder, is my spiritual immune system so relaxed that I am becoming a victim of spiritual “allergies”?  Have I become so introverted that I cannot see the truly important things around me?  Have I lost sight of the cross and am I blind to the spiritual attacks that Satan is hurling every day?  God’s Word is a good light source to examine the world around us.  In its pages we see that our adversary is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 

Surprisingly, as a mother I have found that I cringe when my kids get that layer of mud from playing in the backyard.  I sigh as another load of laundry walks in the door.  I never expected it to bother me that much, and to some extent I’m able to stand back and enjoy watching them have so much fun in the dirt.  But some day’s I’d rather just skip the playground on the lake with all the sand. 

But my kids need to play in the mud.  To get dirty.  To build sand castles.

And then to be clean again.  To bask in long bubble baths and clean jammies and smelly lotion.

And we need that spiritually.  To go out into a lost and dying world.  To make friends with people who don’t know our Christ.  To lend aid to a single mom struggling to buy clothes for her kids.  To offer help to someone struggling with alcohol or drugs or prison recidivism. 

At this stage in my life, there’s only so much I can do to “get out there.”  But the first step is awareness.  And then it’s finding the little things, like praying for the foster parents in my church.  Or donating a case of water for our church’s booth at the county fair.  Maybe volunteering to help at VBS.  It may be choosing to immerse myself in my community by taking my kids to toddler story hour at the library or the nature center.  And it also involves looking with eyes that see.

Dear God, give us eyes that see you at work in the world around us.  Help us to love others and help us to fight your battles and not our own.  Give us spiritually strong immune systems that protect us from the fiery darts of the wicked one.  Let us draw near to You and please shelter us safe in that haven of rest. Amen.

¹ Stewart, Rebecca Felsenthal. “Could My Baby Have an Allergy?” American Baby July 2012: 20-22.

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