Finally Getting It Right

True confession time.  This little crossing guard thing that I’ve volunteered to do at my grandson’s school is not the first time I’ve been involved in this sort of thing.  The last time was when I was in 6th grade.  I was given the opportunity to be part of what was called Safety Patrol.  It was a pretty cool thing.  You got out of class 15 minutes early every day to get ready.  You got to wear this white canvass strap thing that crossed your chest and went around your waist.  On it was the AAA insignia and the words SAFETY PATROL in big letters.  The town kids who were in it were given the responsibility of handling crosswalks around school and hallways in school.  We country kids were typically tasked with monitoring behavior on the buses we rode to and from school.  That was my first experience with authority.  It didn’t go very well.  That’s not because the kids who rode my school bus were particularly bad kids.  They weren’t.  It’s rather that I let the authority go to my head.  I actually got to the point that I kind of liked when a kid broke a bus rule so that I could report them to the principal.  I racked up a pretty impressive “arrest record.  I was so good at it that I could catch a kid changing seats while the bus was in motion even when they didn’t think I was looking.  If they wanted to change seats they were supposed to ask me.  I would decide.  I had power and I liked it.  But rather than gain the respect of the kids on that bus, they came to regard me as kind of a jerk.  Which was pretty much the way I was behaving.  I completely lost sight of the real reason I was there:  to help keep kids safe by following basic rules of riding the bus.   I was supposed to be doing my job because I wanted those kids – my neighbors – to be safe going to school and getting home again.  Let’s just say that on the last day of school that year they gave me quite a performance review by completely soaking me with squirt guns they had smuggled onto the bus.  Report them all?  Nope.  By the time I got home I’d learned my lesson.  Nothing like being soaked all the way through to your undershorts to teach you a little humility.

I should have known better than to behave like that.  I was born into a Christian home and raised around Jesus.  We went to church every Sunday and staying home was not going to be an option unless some part of you was broken, you were throwing up sick, or Jesus came back in glory.  And every Sunday that I sat in church and in Sunday School I heard about Jesus, God’s Son, who came into the world to seek and to save sinners.  I knew that he did not come into the world to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many – for me, too.  Throw his weight around?  Take delight in catching people sinning so he could lower the boom?  I never saw Jesus act that way in any story I ever had in Sunday School or in any sermon I heard preached.  I never saw my Dad act that way, either – not at home and not when he was president of Farm Bureau and not when he was president of the local school board.  He was all about service, too.  I should have known better than to let that authority go to my head.

So why did I?  I did it because human beings are hard-wired ever since the fall into sin in Eden to want power and to exercise it for self.  That’s sin.  God knows we’ve all been there.  So what’s the solution?  Now as then, it is Jesus.  His service at the cross has washed away all the guilt of all my disservice and self-service.  Yours, too.  God in his generous grace has forgiven me and you.  How do we respond to that?  Paul said it as well as you can say it:  “12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”  (Colossians 3:12-14)

So now I’m back “in uniform” again.  This time I get it.  It’s not about me.  It’s about the kids.  Thanks, Jesus, for giving me another run at this.  With your help, I’ll get it right this time.