Different...

I giggled – really it was more of a howl -- when I read the fabric care instructions on the cowboy’s new T-shirt: “Wash in warm with like colours”

I mean really – where in the world would I find ‘like colours’?

Do you have anything in this fluorescent green? What do they even call this colour? It’s like nothing I have ever seen before – not even in the 80’s when we all dressed in those crazy peacock shades.

Where in the world did he get this shirt anyway?

Pretty sure I didn’t buy it – I’d remember that shock, for sure…

Hmmm…what to do?

Being just a tad frugal, I could not run the washing machine for only one t-shirt. So I stuffed it in with a load of jeans and other dark pieces, singing all the while…

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn't belong...

…and fervently hoping that crazy shirt wouldn’t wreck the rest of the load.

Much later, with that image still burned in my brain, and that song still rattling around in there, too, I thought about differences…

Deuteronomy 14:2 says,

 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God,

and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself  

I don’t really like the idea of being peculiar. I’m long past ‘peer pressure’ but nobody likes to be considered weird, and sometimes just identifying myself as a Christian, has put me in that category.

But when I checked the translation, I learned that “peculiar (cgullah pronounced seg-ool-law) means wealth, jewel, peculiar (treasure), proper good, special.” (Lexicon)

Ah, so it doesn’t mean Christians are weird. We’re just loved by God. We’re His treasures, jewels.

Woo hoo!

I know a few Christians who use that phrase ‘peculiar people’ to justify obnoxious behaviour. Oh, boy, are they ever going to be disappointed.

And to get that crazy ‘Sesame Street’ song out of my head, I started singing the chorus:

 For we are a chosen generation

 A royal priest hood

 A holy nation

 A peculiar people…

A peculiar people indeed.
Not to ‘be like the others’ but instead to: 

 

Show forth the praises of Him

Who has called us out of darkness

Out of darkness

Into his marvelous light

Into his marvelous light.

 What a marvelous truth.

Now back to the shirt in the laundry...

My eye socket pain has all but vanished, and the ‘peculiar’ shirt is back in the cowboy’s dresser drawer, waiting to be treasured another day.  If you see a certain ‘glow’ in the sky near ‘the end of the road’, you’ll know the treasure is out once again.