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.”