So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.  GALATIANS 4:8

I confessed this week to a buddy: “My patience has no off-ramp.” There’s no gradual erosion of my patience. My patience just ends, like Thelma and Louise in a car over a cliff. I struggle to find a reason why this is so. Maybe, it stems from some kind of deeply embedded psychological wound. Maybe, it’s my diet. Maybe, it’s the weather (I’m certain there’s some correlation. I’m still waiting for MIT to release a study on the effects of humidity on patience). But, when my patience runs out, the proverbial “switch” is flipped. I’m done. I have nothing left. Not surprisingly, I don’t
typically do well in these circumstances. I say things I regret. I do things I wish I could undo.

I start to believe, at times, an unnerving truth — that this wild, untameable, impatient one is who I am. Impatient outbursts are the outcomes of my truest self. It is as if the most central part of my identity is my own lack of restraint. I live out of that seemingly intractable reality. I’m the one who punts the soccer balls of unruly first graders for not listening while I’m giving instructions to the eternally significant pee-wee soccer drill, “Sharks-and-Minnows” (I actually did this. It was awful. I mentioned it in last week’s message). That truth begins to take over everything else. It becomes who I am.

Yet, the Bible doesn’t seem to echo that particular belief about myself. It says something different. It says to me that I am not the sum total of my errors or my impulses. I am not just a collection of electrical and chemical signals. I am no accident. I am not the unwanted tag-along to a distant and swiftly moving morally upright gathering of Sunday people.

Instead, the apostle Paul writes: you (me, anyone who belongs to Jesus) are his child. No longer am I a ward of the state. No longer known am I known as the unflattering convergence of all things undesirable, I’m someone’s kid.

Years ago, a friend of mine, Roy Schenkenberger wrote a song about this very thing. You can listen to it here. In it, he sings:

“Invited home for dinner: every saint and every sinner:
WE ARE NOT ORPHANS ANYMORE

Sought after and pursued, we are made clean we are made new.
WE ARE NOT ORPHANS ANYMORE.

Forgotten and alone, the one who’s wandered far from home
WE ARE NOT ORPHANS ANYMORE

To the tired and confused, the ones with nothing left to lose
WE ARE NOT ORPHANS ANYMORE”

Children are not guests in their own home. Kids can take freely from the refrigerator (provided it’s not immediately before dinner). Children invite their friends over. They eat Otter pops. They make messes. They have responsibilities. But, they’re always family. This Sunday, we’ll talk about this piece of our identity  that we often neglect. It will be a great opportunity to bring the “forgotten and alone” or  the “tired and confused” — anyone needing to hear that God desires them to be a part of his family that, in Jesus, “we are not orphans anymore.” We’ll celebrate communion together — affirming that Jesus has prepared a seat at the table for us.

See you Sunday,

Jeff