I’m not like everybody else.
Take restaurants for example. When I go into a restaurant, I want to sit at a table, not in a booth. Recent studies show that everybody except me wants a booth. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that you can’t push booths together to make one REALLY BIG booth (“Eisenstein, party of 16.”), tables might disappear from restaurants altogether!
And then the glass of water. When did a wedge of lemon hanging on the lip of the glass become mandatory? I like water-flavored water, not lemon-flavored water. I ask for “ice water, no lemon, please,” and if they bring it to me with lemon, I want a fresh glass, not just the same one with the lemon removed.
And I don’t use a straw.
And I usually don’t like the sandwich just the way it is. “Sure, I can make that without honey mustard and with extra mushrooms, sir. We can have that ready for you Tuesday. And that’ll be two dollars extra.”
I’m not like everybody else.
But here’s the thing:
You’re not like everybody else either!
I have a songwriter friend (remember, I live in Nashville) who puts it this way:
“Everybody’s different from the way we all are.
It’s not that we’re all weird, it’s just there’s no such thing as par.”
(“Backwards in the Back” by Alan Robertson)
We’re all unique, with different personalities, different preferences, and different quirks. And that’s what makes life fun. Each of us with our uniquenesses becoming all of us sharing life.
None of us is really “like everybody else.” Neither is everybody else!
I wonder how we can encourage that in our church families more. Better yet, I wonder, as a pastor, how I stiffle Uniqueness with any “Well, of course, we all think that …”
It’s hard to be heard above the din of a culture that emits a constant barrage of “you are insignificant and inadequate unless you have this, unless you drive that, unless you live there, unless you are like the people who ‘really matter'” But it is so critical in the church. Everybody has a part to play. “If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’ The head can’t say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you.’ In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary.” 1 Cor. 12:17-22 NLT