…lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. (Colossians 1:10, NRSV)
We used our church parking lot for a drive-in movie last October and, on the day of the movie as I was scurrying around to get everything ready, I noticed an unfamiliar truck parked in the lot. There are some community members who pay a small fee to park in the lot during the week, but the owner of this truck wasn’t one of them. As I walked up to the truck to check the license plate number, I noticed a snake decal in the back window: “Don’t Tread On Me.” I couldn’t help but see the irony in someone not wanting others to trespass on their freedoms and yet they were doing just that in our lot. “I guess actions don’t always follow a person’s label,” I muttered to myself as I tried to figure out what to do with the truck.
Not long after that, I got an email from the Chicago Public Library letting me know that a book I checked out had been renewed. As you can see from the screen shot above, I’m now in the library database as “CHRISTIAN ST COON.” I don’t know how it happened, but I like to believe that the library has deemed me worthy of sainthood so I get a chuckle every time I get a renewal email. But I also wonder: Even if I jokingly claim sainthood, do my actions match this label?
I joined with many others last week in decrying the harmful, racist, and deadly actions in Washington, DC. As a new administration gets ready to take over, I’m also ready to speak up for issues that align with my beliefs (like abolishing the federal death penalty). But I also have to be pretty diligent in asking myself, do my actions correlate with how I present myself to the world? My “label”? Am I, as Colossians asks, leading a life worthy of the Lord? Bearing fruit in every good work? Some days are better than others.
Whatever label we give ourselves–“partner” to “parent,” “Christian” to “spiritual”–I hope that we do what we can–with God’s guidance–to lovingly live into that label. We won’t always get it right. We may trespass even though we don’t want to be trespassed upon and we will not always be so saintly. But we need people to live lives worthy of the Lord and lovingly live into that label.