AS I WAS DRIVING back from Good Friday service and a quick stop at IHOP (rhyme unintended, but accepted) with a friend, I was passed rather dramatically by a large SUV. The license plate read "IM TXN 4" and was complimented by an oversized Dallas Coyboy's star attached to the trailer hitch. I laughed out loud because somehow the vehicle was a moving stereotype.
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It is fascinating what we will do to differentiate and identify ourselves within the "group." We create custom license plates, we adopt habits and vernacular and wardrobes. If we're not TXN, maybe we just put a fish on our bumper. But when it all shakes out, the important identities aren't our own. The barriers we so often build in self-definition are artificial.
Kevin Miller, a pastor at my church pointed out, Christ came down and pushed all the cafeteria tables together. We're all at one table - jocks and nerds, TXNs and RCKSTRs, and whatever other ways we might try to position ourselves in a world where we really all have on position. We are all here for the glory of God. And that is what this season, Easter is about.
