Unless you live in a cabin in the woods, you probably saw it! Much like the hoopla surrounding the recent release of the iphone, hundreds of thousands of people turned out in droves to make their purchase of the final installment in the much beloved and yet belittled series of Harry Potter books. Now in all fairness to the serious Potter fans, I've only read one of these books and it was the very first one to come out. Overall, I enjoyed the story and even enjoyed the movie that soon followed. However, for whatever reason, I never saw to it to read another one. So, I can't grasp camping out anywhere and waiting to purchase much of anything be it an iphone, a CD, or the recent Potter book (Read my blog on the iphone for more on this.) Most things can wait until the next day when the lines are gone and you can take pleasure in whatever you've purchased because you enjoyed a good night's sleep the night before.
The second thing I saw were the countless numbers of people turning out dressed as their favorite character. Not only would I never wait up until 12:01 AM to buy the book, I would most certainly never do it dressed in some crazy garb. Okay, so I've done something similar every year since I was 4 or 5 years old on the day known as Halloween. But I did it for one reason and one reason only - CANDY! Anyway, back to what I was getting at. People dressing up as characters they will never in fact be - after all, the book is a work of fiction.
Yet, as Christians, we can dress up and be that which we aspire to be. In the timeless classic My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers points out that we are wrong to hold Jesus as simply a great teacher. If Jesus is merely a teacher, all He can do is tease me by setting the bar to a height to high for me to ever attain. Chambers states: "What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure of heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God?"
The Good News is that when we are born again of the Spirit of God, we gain a new understanding that Jesus didn't come to only teach; he came to make me what he teaches I should be. Chambers goes on to say: "The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man [or woman] the disposition that ruled His [Jesus'] own life..." Wow! What an awesome thought. To receive the "mind of Christ" - that's what I'd wait overnight in line for. And I might even dress up.
