 |
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
 |
|
||
Never been another you
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Never try to make anyone like yourself.
You know, and God knows, that one of you is enough."
It is a marvelous thing to contemplate that there has never been
another "you" ever, not since Adam and Eve. Idential twins are
not really
identical.
This means that all of us are truly unique and this is
reason enough for us not to try to make another person be like us.
In My Fair Lady Professor Higgins laments by singing "Why can't a
woman be
more
like a man?." We need to always remember that we are unique, just
like
everyone else.
This being said, while we are all different, yet we are also so much
alike. Human nature is human nature.
All so unique and yet all so much alike. Sounds like an Oxymoron doesn't
it?
Snow flakes may look alike to us yet we are told that each crystal is
unique. Most of us have one head, two arms and two legs, we look
similar to one another yet scientists tell us that no two of us have the
same
DNA or finger prints or a host of other things that show our uniqueness.
Our Creator that made us made us each a unique individual yet He has
given us His commandments to follow and while we are all different, He
has told us through Paul "For whom he did foreknow, he also did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son."
Certainly there has never been another like our Lord Jesus Christ, yet
his Father is saying that we should try to conform to the image of His
Son. He is the one we should follow.
Children are great mimics and they try to be like those they admire.
Paul tells us "We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with
some
who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and
compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise."
So as Emerson said, we should not try to make anyone like us and Paul
tells us that we should not compare ourselves to others but, we should
strive to be comformed to the image of Christ.
We can always find others to compare ourselves to and think, "Well,
compared to them I am not so bad."
When we compare ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ,
we all fall woefully short but he is the one we should try to follow.
In our mortal state we will never measure up but just think
that very soon he is coming and Paul tells us that when he comes he
will "change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his
glorious
body." Notice he did not say, change our "vile" minds."
We cannot do
much about our body but we do have control over what we think and if we
will
change our thoughts now to think like Jesus, then when he comes he will
change our vile bodies.
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall
appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."
Rather than trying to make others be like us, let us concentrate on
trying to make ourselves be more like Jesus. Again Paul tells us "For
who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we
have
the mind of Christ." By working at thinking like Jesus now, we will
be
like him in nature when he comes. We pray that the words we often sing
will soon be true.
"We shall be like him," O how rich the promise."
Robert J. Lloyd