Ahh…periwinkle. I first encountered this word in elementary school, as I colored pictures using my large box of Crayola crayons, 64 colors with a built in sharpener. The box contained 64 colors but really to me, there were really about 8 colors and the rest were spares. I used the crayon that was actually named “blue” initially, but then when I lost that, I would use “cornflower,” then “cadet blue” when “cornflower” went missing, and so forth.
The “periwinkle” crayon, I classified as a purple, so I ignored it, probably until I had lost “violet,” “blue violet,” and possibly maybe even after I had lost “plum.” It’s a purple right? Or is it a blue?
Apparently, it is kind of both. Officially blue, because purple is a combination of blue and red, but it looks blue sometimes and purple other times, depending on lighting and the other things around it. It’s in the middle of blue and purple on the color wheel.
The middle. Kind of a hard place to be. Middle child, not the oldest or the youngest; middle school, the infamous ‘tween years; middle names, names that people rarely use, the “third” identifier for most. In tennis, the space between the baseline and net is called “no man’s land,” named thus because no player wants to be caught there, and of course, we have the “no man’s land” in World War I, the dangerous area of land between two enemy trench systems.
The middle is also a hard place to be when following Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!”
I’ll admit, I often look wistfully at the old life! I could cheat on the scales at Central Market, not watch my language, and flip people off. That would be fun, but those aren’t my actual struggles. My struggles are with people, specifically difficult people. Those are the times I wish I could behave the way I used to, just eliminate from my life people who disagreed with me, or rubbed me the wrong way, or upset me in any way.
But now I have to deal with all these verses telling me to, essentially, be a nice person, regardless. To love people, all people, those who believe differently from me, who don’t acknowledge me, or worse, who have spit on me and cursed me. Turn the other cheek. Bear with others, be patient, extend grace, extend kindness. This is when the “new creation” thing is tough!
The great thing though, is that being a new creation in Christ brings with it something that I could never get with my old life. Peace. The knowledge that I did the right thing, that I tried to be nice, that I tried to extend grace, that I tried to be patient. The truth of the matter is, eliminating people from my life, or being mean back, or extracting whatever revenge that I schemed up, none of that was ever truly satisfying, and most of the time, I felt worse than before.
With Christ, and in Christ, I am filled with the warmth of the Spirit, and with every step that I take toward Him, every inch I move away from the middle and toward the new creation, I get to peel off this old skin that does nothing to help me, and ultimately will destroy me.
May we all keep trying, keep focusing on living as Jesus would want us, so that we can feel the riches of the life that He promises.
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