Jesus is not my Snuggie

Remember last year when Snuggies were on everyone's Christmas list? I know...I didn't get it either. Twenty million Snuggies were sold by January of 2009 and four million were sold in 2009. They were a cultural phenomenon that were initially mocked and parodied on TV, yet come Christmas time everyone wanted one. My mother even knit Snuggies for all my nieces. Personally, I was repulsed by this marketing gimmick that infested us like a plague. It's a blanket with ARMS!!!

I think what makes these Snuggies so attractive is they are a comfort blanket. When we've had a bad day or there's horrible weather outside we love to curl up in a blanket and escape into a book or TV show. They are our "safe place." My comfort blanket is a blanket I've had since I was an infant. I affectionately call it my "cold blanket."

In a recent coffee conversation with a friend I made the statement "Jesus is not our Snuggie!" The problem is that we tend to treat him that way. We keep Jesus neatly folded up on the shelf of our life and reserve him for those bad days. On those bad days we haul him down and wrap ourselves in the promises of "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1) or "...in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). Both of these promises are true and need to be anchors of our faith, however, we cannot reduce Jesus to our Snuggie, to our comfort blanket.

When we look at Scripture we do see that Christ is our source of comfort and strength. We also see that life in Christ is not safe. When we look at the lives of Christ and his Apostles where did we ever get the idea that life in Christ is comfortable let alone safe? Christ was born into a world with a bounty on his head, he was led into the desert to be challenged by satan. Eleven of the Apostles were killed for following Christ. For the first 3 centuries of our faith the church met surrounded by corpses in the catacombs under the city of Rome. So why are we surprised when our lives are uncomfortable, or when we experience more than we can bare? These are the times that we learn what it truly means for Christ to be our comfort and our strength. It is in these times that we come to know the truth of Christ's promises.

Finding God in a Forrest

Flipping through the channels last night I stumbled across the tail end of Forrest Gump. It made phrases such as "Life is like a box of chocolates," "that's all I got to say about that," and "stupid is as stupid does" were made famous. As I turned to the channel Jenny, Forrest's childhood friend and lifelong love, was laying on a bed dieing from AIDS, while Forrest sat at her bedside retelling the tales of his adventures during their time apart. It was at this point I was struck with how Forrest's love for Jenny parallels God's love for us.

The uniqueness of this relationship is that Jenny was one of the first people to demonstrate kindness to Forrest. While it is clear that Jenny is the only girl for Forrest, it is also clear that Jenny never even entertains the idea of being with Forrest. Through a series of events Jenny begins to fade in and out of Forrest's life. Until, one night Jenny tells Forrest to stay away from her then...as Forrest says, "just like that, she was gone."

Jenny's life is full of poor choices and circumstances that lead her into a downward spiral. Later on in life Jenny contacts Forrest and asks him to come see her. He does so and we discover Jenny is dieing. Forrest moves Jenny into his home and they eventually get married, despite her impending death.

Many of us are like Jenny in one way or another. For some of us, we see God as a nice guy, but we would never entertain the idea of entering into a intimate relationship with him. Others, we have told God we want him to stay away from us. There are those of us who are friends with God, but we don't always treat him the way he deserves to be treated. Then some of us are going down a self-destructive path.

In whatever way we may identify with Jenny, God's response to us is the same as Forrest's response to Jenny; unwavering devotion and love. Throughout the movie Forrest is faithful to Jenny and we never see his love for her falter, regardless of how long she's gone, what she does, or how she treats him. Forrest embodies the agape of God, whose love for us is totally independent of our actions, but is an outpouring of his being.