We were enjoying a nice little lunch. Debby had grilled some salmon and fixed a small spinach salad. My, what a heart-healthy feast! For dessert, we even had a handful of delicious dark chocolate covered “dried plums” (code word for you know what—rhymes with brunes and drunes)…but still the yummiest chocolate-covered fiber I’ve ever eaten! Soon they’ll be making little round candy-coated “dried plum” chocolates that melt in your mouth and not in your hands (“B & M’s”?). But I digest, I mean digress…
In the spirit of breaking bread like the early followers of the Lord, we try to have a few moments at least once a day at mealtime to eat some unleavened bread and drink some juice and think about Jesus. This day Debby said, “You know what I think? I think Jesus didn’t come to earth just so that we could be like Him. I think He came to show us how to be us, all that we were originally designed to be. He’s not just an example for us to imitate, He is the example of who we were created to be.” And you know what I think?
I think she’s right.
In other words, in Jesus, I’m possible. The very best me I can be. The one who is made in the image of God, designed for daily companionship with God, and privileged to partner with God in caring for the world He created. When Jesus encourages us to be complete, even as He is complete, He is inviting us to be fully human and full of the Spirit of God. He invites us to live authentically in every aspect of our being.
One interpretation of Proverbs 22:6 reminds all parents of the wonderful opportunity to rear their children according to their natural bent, their inborn inclinations: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” The way a child (and an adult) should go is the way God uniquely designed and individually gifted them to be. I’m wary of spiritual anti-individuality indoctrination that produces cookie-cutter Christians who are robotically religious and all just exactly alike.
John Mason, in An Enemy Called Average, writes: “People are born originals, but most die copies. The call in your life is not a copy…God made you a certain way. You are unique…one of a kind. To copy others is to cheat yourself out of the fullness of what God has called you to be and to do. So choose to accept and become the person God has made you to be. Tap into the originality and creative genius of God in your life.”
The example of Jesus calls us back to a beautiful Garden where God wants to walk with us and talk with us and work with us in loving the world He created. Jesus invites you to be like Him so you can get a picture of what it means to be distinctly YOU in divine relationship with GOD. Galatians 6:4 “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that.”
Dennis Lynn
