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Do Not Be Conformed to the World
When I was four years old, I was coloring at the kitchen table. I was totally at peace and concentrating on keeping within the lines. For some reason I gave people purple hair. I was four years old so that misgiving was allowed to slide by my parents. I’m four years old so what’s the harm. One day my mother was observing my coloring and just stopped and stared at me. Her silence was noticeable, so I stopped coloring and looked up at her and said, “what?” I was expecting a purple hair comment.
She said I was using the wrong hand, and that I am not allowed to color with my left hand, and to put the crayon in my right hand. The argument and tears began. I told her that I am more comfortable using my left hand and I don’t want to use my right hand. Now she was not “asking” me, she was “telling” me, and in an angry voice that made me feel bad, like I was doing something very wrong. (What I did not know at four years old and not until I became an adult, was that her older sister was left-handed, and my mother and her sister could not stand each other. My left-handed coloring was a reminder of her sister.) What a world!
I started crying. I’m four years old and I am crying because I’m being told to do something I do not want to do. I’m four years old and God created me left-handed. I did not know that. She did not know that, or maybe didn’t care, but God knew it. I was born hard-wired to be left-handed. So, like any obedient four- year old, I placed the crayon on my right hand and thus began the rest of my life a functioning “right-hander”, living in a left handed body. But, my mother missed a lot of other things! My wallet is kept in my left back pocket, I can kick a football over the goal posts with my left foot, and I bat left-handed. When my wife and I started to have lots of children, I told her that if we noticed our child using their left hand as their dominant hand, to let them do it. She knew my story and said, ‘Absolutely!’
One day Jesus was walking near the water and sees a bunch of fishermen. Fishing is their life. It’s all they know and what they do best. He even saw a tax collector, hated by everyone, but that was his job and how he made a living. He was not a fisherman, but got happy whenever he saw a big catch arrive on the docks. His wallet was about to get fatter! They were all conformed to this world. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
So, I really want to get this right. God wants me left-handed, if I was made that way, and don’t let the world tell me otherwise. And, He wants me to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. That sounds permanent. There’s no going back. But wait, there’s more! God says that His will is good, and pleasing, and perfect!
I did stop giving people purple hair. My first grade teacher took care of that.
And even though my current address is this world, it’s not my home. My home is in heaven. Your home, too! John 14:3 says, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
There is not a more comforting verse in the Bible than the promise that God makes to all who belong to Him. If we are His, He will not leave us as orphans but will one day come back to escort us home…to His home!
The world does not want you to pray, attend church, read God’ Word, or hang out with the Holy Spirit during your day. The world wants to control you and make you feel insufficient and unworthy. Don’t give in to the world! You may suffer, you may be ridiculed, you may feel harm, it may even make you cry being pulled in different directions, but one direction has been prepared for you. Cling to that one. You will notice that the world gets weary and one day will give up on you and move on to people far weaker than you. Be strong in the Lord! It’s what He wants! God loved you and I do too!
De Colores! Rev. Jack Moody, #355 (Left handed at heart!). |
