As the recycle truck rolled down the hill it hit my friend. Her fanny pack was in that truck. That wouldn’t be so bad except for what was in the fanny pack. Her passport, her wallet, her credit cards, her driver’s license were on the brink of becoming a new whatever. But she was not giving up so easily. Jumping in the car she arrived at the back of the truck just in time to see the compactor do its job. “Sorry, Maam,” said the driver. “Once it’s in there I can’t get it out.”
But she was not giving up so easily. She followed the truck to the recycle center and persuaded some big cheese to dump the truck contents apart from the main pile. After a while of unsqueezing the squeezed there it was. Redeemed. Now the moral of the story almost writes itself. Chasing after the valuable, rummaging through the discards, saving the lost; all the elements of the Gospel story are there.
However, that is not what struck me. It was the squeezing. The icons of her identity were being crushed into something else. As she was telling me of her adventure I remembered a text paraphrased by J. B. Phillips. Romans 12:2, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, . . .” It’s a great message about letting God shape us and not allowing modern culture to determine who we are. If we are not vigilant about what we become we really are squeezed into “mold.” That’s a slimy fungal thought.
But a great thought is the rest of Romans 12:2, “. . . let God re-mold (reform) your minds from within, . . . and move towards the goal of true maturity.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on June 1, 2015
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org