Last week, I was blessed to be able to spend the week in the woods with around 80 6th graders. Many of you would say “What in the world?” But it was really a great time. So now you know why lasts weeks posts were so odd.
I wrote down one note during the week.It was on a hike where the instructor was telling the children about different types of rock. She mentioned one particular type of rock – “Metamorphic”. I took off my pack, open the zipper, grabbed my Moleskin and scribbled down these words:
Metamorphic -> changed by the environment. A type of rock, or a type of Christian?
It’s the idea of being changed, and helping others to change that struck me. It was as if her words were a rock thrown toward my head.
I have come back to those thoughts several times, and since that time the book of Colossians seems to find its way in front of my eyes. In Colossians we can find this somewhat famous line:
You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 3:7 NIV
Changed!
Changed, not by the environment as much as by the mercy of God and the love of Christ. But changed none the less.
Colossians 3 continues with this:
…since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 9-10
and then it ends when the results of the change
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. 14And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:12-14 New International Version (NIV)
If you were a rock, would you be classified as metamorphic?