On being set apart...

It takes our family quite a bit of time to ready oursleves for the pool. Swimsuits...check. Water bottles...check. Snack bags...check. Towels...check. Pool toys...check. Sunscreen...check. Everyone is flying around the house...looking for this...getting that. But eventually everyone is settled into the steamy van and we're on our way...two seconds down the street.

In our short history of having children...we have had many, many, many different pool toys coming in and out of our home. Inevitably they break...much sooner than I would have liked...or they get lost. But the most frustrating...is when they wander home with another family playing at the pool. In the last several years, I have had several encounters with other poolside mommies...that have actually challenged me in my "Christ-likeness"! Last week, I brought two new sets of pool toys...straight from the $1 section at Target...still with tags on...for the kids to play with at the pool. Over the course of an hour, there were more toys in the baby pool then children. It was beginning to get hazardous to try and swim for fear of getting knocked in the head by a flying torpadeo. When it was time to head home...I sent the big kids on a mission of collecting our toys. Being that ours were new...it was relatively easy to pick out the bright shining toys as opposed to the dull, peeling plastics. My two new sets of toys were nestled behind two moms playing with their toddler babies. I walked over and asked if they wouldn't mind giving them back because we were leaving the pool. I was told that they were not my toys...they belonged to them. I was flabergasted...seriously? Uh...okay? Um...well...
I floundered a bit. Mostly because in the neighborhood I'm known as the "preacher's wife" and because my kids were watching. I walked away...trying to hush the outraged kids staring at the two mommy "thiefs". We packed up and once in the van I explained that really it was my fault for not labeling our toys. I would NOT make that mistake again!!!

After a cheap trip to the dollar store...we had a few more toys...and believe me...the J on those toys are unmistakable!!! Those are mine. They belong to the J family. They will not be going home with you...or anyone else! :-)

All that to say...it truly got me thinking. I wanted something that would mark my toys MINE. To easily be able to glance down and pick out which ones belonged to us. Isn't that what Christ wants of us? To be so completely set apart from this world that we stand out...that we are clearly marked HIS.

Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing;  then I will welcome you. II Corinthians 6:17

The Old Testament is filled with ways the Lord set the Jewish people apart. How they lived. What they ate. How they worshipped. They were so completely different from the nations surrounding them. Everyone knew about the "Israelites". They were God's witness to a dying world of what purity...redemption...hope would look like. If they compromised...the witness became blurry. And it looked nothing at all like redemption and hope.

We, as New Testament believers, are to the world that same witness. We are that example of Christ..the picture of the gospel to an unbelieving world. A life of transformation. Regeneration. Radical living...that could only take place because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

When those around me see me...are they clearly able to see a difference? Is there a name stamped across my life that becomes evident through all my actions...choices...decisions? Do I resemble a temple of the Holy Spirit? Set apart...marked by holiness? 

A silly analogy. One that might not even connect if you didn't live through it. But in that moment...as I looked down at all of my freshly Sharpie marked toys...I asked God to make me the same. Marked with His name. So easily picked out as His. A witness of what the radical power of the Gospel can do in one wrecked by grace.