Rare Form

After a long day my wife and I were getting ready to watch a little TV before bed when she said to me, “You’re in rare form tonight!”

I can’t tell you exactly what I did to bring that comment from her. I had just made a very sarcastic joke – was that what she reacted to? It was a Monday and Monday’s are not always a pastor’s best day of the week – was it showing? Recently it seems like I have had more plates spinning in the air than I can keep going (you remember that old trick, don’t you) – was my panic showing? Maybe I was jittery because I had too much coffee – I don’t know.

You are in rare form – I can’t even tell you if that was a compliment or a judgment, but as I played with the phrase, it occurred to me that the world around us ought to be able to say that about Christians. “You are in rare form” – meaning that what others see in us is not what you see in everybody.

When I first became a Christian I had a co-worker named Scott. Scott’s language rose from the gutter and so did his personal ethics. Even so, Scott was a likable guy and after awhile he asked me a question: “Are you religious or something? I notice you aren’t like the rest of us – what gives?” I was most pleased that he could tell the difference, even though I was a irritated that it took his nudging to share my faith. Scott didn’t embrace Christ, preferring to, as he put it, "take his chances." Perhaps later on he did – I am just grateful that I was in rare form before Scott.

I think Anne Graham Lotz describes what rare form ought to be manifested in the life of a Christ follower in her book My Heart’s Cry. I want more of Jesus, she says – but what does that mean? Her chapter headings give us insight: I want more of His voice in my ear, more of His tears on my face, more of His praise on my lips, more of His death in my life, more of His dirt on my hands, more of His fruit in my service – you get the idea. More of Jesus in every area of our lives.

My prayer is that these things would not be occasional or fleeting, rare indeed, but normal, natural, a daily thing. Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Simple translation: more of Christ in every area of my life more of the time.

Definitely not rare form.

We are reminded in 2 Corinthians 4:7 that we have the treasure of Christ in jars of clay. My fear is always that what people see the most is the jar of clay. My heart’s desire is that they see the treasure shining forth. My prayer for myself and those Christ followers I journey with is that such a thing would not be rare form but our typical way of life. We will, of course, need God’s surpassing power to pull that off.

Rare form – I wonder what my wife was referring to?