When Dorothy Hammill's hair flung out in a perfect circle as she ice skated in the Olympics, millions of women made appointments that week to get a "Hammill" cut. Bo Derek's braids sent people into a braiding frenzy as if we thought a bunch of skinny braids on our heads would make us perfect tens. Jennifer Anniston sent curls out with her board-straight shiny hair hanging straight around her face in the popular "Friends" sitcom. Even my curl queen, Andie McDowell, ironed her beautiful curls to fit "in" with the rest of the world. When will the madness stop? When will some curly haired heroine step up and change this trend for the rest of us? I could save 15 minutes every day if frizzy and bushy were the new look. Men, you're just as bad about the hair on your faces. From the Grizzly Adams look to the scruffy Don Johnson half-beard to a Tom Selleck mustache to the Johnny Depp goatee to clean-shaven, styles change for you, too, and you're just as quick to follow them. If only we believers cared as much for the part of us that isn't visible. What if we were as watchful and quick to follow God's example of love as we are to follow a lesser star's style?
"Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with Him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of Himself to us. Love like that." Ephesians 5:1-2 (The Message)
How well do we imitate God's love? After all these years of growing in Christ, God's unique, unconditional, all-forgiving Love still seems unattainable in my life. Leading into Ephesians 5:1-2 (above), Paul insisted on mentioning forgiveness as inseparable from God's love.
"Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you."
Ephesians 4:31-32 (The Message)
I've experienced moments when I knew the peace of having forgiven everyone I needed to forgive and of asking for forgiveness from those I had wronged, but by and large, my imitation of God's love is a poor one. As Jesus said (in the end of Matthew 5, according to The Message), "This is what God does. He gives His best - the sun to warm and the rain to nourish - to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that."
I've still got a lot of resentment and worldliness to snip out of my life to imitate God's love and there's always selfishness growing like a wild gray hair Vidal Sassoon can't tame. Just like a fashionable "do" requires upkeep and conditioning, my imitation of God's love requires daily upkeep and un-conditioning.
Lord God, will we never believe that imitating You is the only way to become the people You designed us to be? We pursue endless shortcuts to avoid doing the one thing You ask of us: to love You and others unconditionally. We intend to love but grow too defensive to take the next step when we're ignored or pushed back. You kept loving us; You didn't step away from the rejection. Help us imitate You and see how big eternity is compared to what we face here. Revive us in Your Love, Lord. Guide us to model Your great Love that lifts us out of the darkness. Shine through us and help us love in spite of circumstances and people who don't love in return. Thank You for not giving up on us. Thank You for loving us when we don't give You a thought. Thank You for being bigger than all our shameful, selfish sin. Help us imitate You because You are our Righteous Hero.
In the Name of Jesus, the Perfect Imitation of God the Father
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