​Fitting In

I was once a ninth grader. That was a long time ago, but it wasn’t so long ago that I have forgotten what being a ninth grader was like.  In some ways I was a bundle of angst.  I was at that age when probably more than ever before and since I was acutely aware of wanting to fit in.  And in so many ways I didn’t feel that I did.  I was going to a high school in which I literally did not know anyone before I arrived on campus. It was Michigan Lutheran Seminary in Saginaw, Michigan and not a single grade school classmate or friend was enrolling there with me.  I really felt alone.  I was at that awkward age of not quite being a young adult but desperately wanting to no longer be a little kid.  My prospects for fitting in did not seem very good.  I was not athletic enough to really fit in with the jocks.  I was in no danger of ever being chosen as valedictorian, so I didn’t really fit in with the brains.  I looked at myself in the mirror and my ears seemed too big, and so did my pimples.
 
The very first night that I was on campus, something happened that I still remember as being one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to me in high school. It was an unofficial custom at MLS that upper classmen could, within reason, make under classmen do just about anything they wanted.  I was down in the student union, doing my best to be invisible.  A couple of upper classmen decided it would be great fun and very entertaining to make me quite visible.  As a group of freshmen girls were sitting in a big group in one corner of the union, those upperclassmen commanded me to go over to them, stand at attention and repeat three times:  “Hello, my name is Dan Simons and I would like to join your group.”
 
I did it because I had no choice.  But I was so humiliated by the experience that I literally ran out of the student union and spent the rest of the night in my dorm room assuming that my high school life was destined for disaster.  I would be forever labeled as that geeky farm kid who made such a fool out of himself.  Fitting in was no longer my biggest concern; I just didn’t want to be laughed at for the rest of my high school career.
 
The next day was the first day of classes.  It didn’t take long before the effects of the night before started to show up…but not in the way I had feared.  It seemed that nearly all the girls in my class knew my name.  They didn’t know hardly any upperclassmen by name, but they knew me.  My social life was a whole different experience after that.  And when class elections were held just a few days later, I was elected class treasurer.
 
It seems that in a most unlikely way, I had found a way to fit in.  But it wasn’t because I had become more athletic, or smarter, or better looking, or completely zit-free. It’s just that they knew my name.
 
Our God wants nothing more than to fit into our hearts and lives.  But he wants that not because he is a bundle of adolescent insecurities who has a need to fit in.  He wants to fit into our hearts and lives because he knows that unless he does we will never be all that he wants us to be.  And once he does find a place in our hearts and lives, our lives and eternities will never be the same.  How does God find a place in our hearts?  He does that by telling us that we have a place in his heart.  He does that by telling us how he made a place for us in his family now and in his heaven in eternity.  That has everything to do with Jesus because Jesus did everything to make it so.  He lived a perfect life so that the perfection we need to be worthy of a place in his kingdom was accomplished on our behalf.  He died on the cross so that every sin that would have disqualified us for a place in his kingdom has been washed away.  In fact, everything in the Bible is part of God’s “profile” that tells us who he is and what he has done for us and what he continues to do for us.  The better we know that name, the more clearly we see how he fit us into his heart and his plan.
 
So, yes, I fit in!  You do, too!  The Savior who made that so is worthy of a place in my heart.  How about yours?