Hide and Seek. Have you ever played that childhood game? I played a lot of hide and seek as a kid in Westernville with my friends. The game progressed and changed over the years. The field of play grew, and then we moved the game to twilight and darkness, then to the cemetery. We played hide and go seek with odd abandon.
The game changed again when I was about 26 or 27. My wife and I had babies! I began to crawl around the living room and call to the kids to come find me - I would often have 3/4’s of my body sticking out from behind the couch or a curtain and I would call to them until they got the fun of the hunt!
The game has changed again. Turns out the real me is playing hide and seek with me - the real you too! People seek for “themselves” in the oddest places. In popularity and riches, in drugs and alcohol, in stuff, in people’s opinions. We need to turn people around and invite them to play, “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:1-3 NRSV.
About Me
- Pastor Bill
- I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ, a happy husband, father and grandfather!
3 comments:
Chapters with such gender constrictions are always difficult for me, but I try to just remember context and move on... not easy for me though!
I wonder what a community of faith would look like that better practiced what is suggested here!
The Ghandi line about never meeting a Christian haunts me. I am often a bad ambassador for the Kingdom I claim to represent.
Bill
Wow, Bill, I really like the way you put these verses in terms of hiding and seeking. When you really think about it, it’s true – we hid from the truth about what weren’t doing and what we know we should be doing. Then it goes on to talk about all the things we “used to do” that were “put to death.” We gotta really try hard not to resurrect those things, because the devil never stops trying to win. There’s a bunch of rules for living here, and when I read them it doesn’t sound so hard, but I know that as life continues, we continue to get challenged, and continue to mess up.
Then, he goes on to tell use to clothe ourselves with all great things: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience + bind them all together with LOVE! (verses 12-14). How our lives would be totally different if we honestly put those on every morning. Marianne who works at Aldersgate said that she put this verse on her mirror where she gets dressed so that she remembers what we should really be wearing each day as we face the world. I really should do that too, especially now that Sara and I have our own mirror!
The whole last section – vs 18-25 – have been used wrong by boys I know to try to prove that women should be like bowing down to their men…but that’s not really what it’s about. He speaks of a loving, Christian relationship, and for a Husbands and Wives, it’s a mutual submission if anything at all. Then at the end, he asks us to work hard in all we do, knowing that it’s for GOD, not for the people of this world. If I really thought that way all the time, it would certainly change the way I change the way I worked at my job and stuff like that. We used these verses to help us get through our work at camp, whether it was cleaning toilets, washing dishes, or working with campers, we knew that it was all for God. How great is that to know.
Good bless,
Marshall
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