An Open Book

W

henever I visit a shopping mall, I just naturally gravitate to certain stores.  I don't even realize I'm headed that way and the next thing I know, there I stand in the middle of the store, wondering how I got there.   Have you ever had this happen to you?  I mean, you just can't help it.  Some people go to the shoe store, some visit a particular clothes shop, some go for the food court, a personal favorite of mine, and still others head for the nearest store selling all kinds of nifty gadgets. However, for me, the store I frequent the most is the bookstore.  I simply cannot visit a mall without going into a store and browsing through the available stacks of books.  Books are one of my greatest loves and I love being surrounded by them.

Before coming to seminary, my brother and I owned our own home.  My room had a great feature that was unique.  I installed a study loft, complete with bookshelves, in my bedroom. An iron ladder led to the loft and I would go up there to escape, to read, to nap, and to think.  I placed all my books there and cataloged them on my computer.  I knew which books I had and on what shelf they resided.  If someone borrowed a book, I knew who had it and my room was incomplete until it was returned.  I can still see those books and their arrangement on the shelves. I took great pride in them and would frequently go to the loft just to be near them.  To ensure the books always remained in my possession, I bought an embosser, personalized with my initials, and embossed all my books, marking each of them as my own, belonging to no one else.

Do you realize that we are to Christ just like those books are to me?  James 1:18 says, "In his goodness he chose to make us his own children by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his choice possession."  Each book on my shelf was there because I wanted it to be and it had its own unique place on the shelf that I had selected for it.  In the same way, we belong to Christ because he wants us.  He knows all there is to know about us and he loves us anyway.  As James says, we are his precious possessions.  Out of all the things he created, Jesus chose to give his life for us, to save us from our sins and to restore us to a proper relationship with God. To make us his own, he shed his blood on Calvary's cross.  When we accept him as our Lord and Savior, he places his mark on us and we become his.  We belong to no one else.  He is aware of us at all times and he has chosen the place of our service, the exact place where we will bring glory to God.

The books that lined the shelves of my study loft had several things in common.  They all had an outside cover, some soft, some hard, some big, some small, some colorful, some bland.  Likewise, they were all composed of pages on which ink had impressed the words of a story.  Each book was different from all the others, yet each book was an integral part of my personal library because it was marked with my personal seal.  This is a perfect picture of the body of Christ.  We are unique, with our own stories to tell.  Some of us are hard, some soft, some colorful, some bland, some big, some small. However, if we have accepted Christ, we carry his seal.  We are his precious possession and we make up his body.

If the pages of your life were opened today and your story read, would there be any indication of Christ's stamp upon your life?  Is your life unmistakably marked with blood of Jesus?  Do the people reading your life know to whom you belong?