Safety Patrol and Self Exaltation

Sixth grade was the year. The ultimate year. The last year of grade school and your chance to shine. To become a "safety patrol" girl.

It was the much coveted honor. You had to be chosen and elected by your teachers based on your academic and character qualities. I wanted to be a safety patrol gal. Real. Bad. (Should have been a clue to my life long struggle with striving to earn God's favor...but, that's for another day...)

So the long awaited semester came, the day for announcements given over a loud speaker into every class room in the building by our tall, Texas prinicipal at T.G. Terry elementary school. One by one the names were read...Bambi, Julie, Michele, all of the girls I just knew would be a shoe in...Lawonda, Robyn, etc...and that was that. I didn't make the cut. I tried to hold back the emotion.

Sad thing was, and still is true many times in my heart today, I didn't want to be part of the safety patrol to serve others. I wanted to be part of the "important" crowd. I wanted respect, to be esteemed. Not a smidgen of care for anyone else's safety, just my own rep.

Unfortunately, I didn't have insight into this coy desire way back then. I wish I could say I was ashamed of this and went straight away to my savior for grace & forgiveness...yet, even so, God was merciful to my deceitful, glory craving heart.

My fifth grade teacher found me in my music class later in the day. She told me of how she went to the principals' office after the safety patrol list rolled off of his microphone, how she just knew there was a mistake. Sure enough, on the back of the paper with the list of the beloved "chosen" girls, was my name.

Now, I would like to say THIS is where I hung my head in shame...surely I repented.

Alas, tis not so. The snare was tight, fixed as an anchor. Now, I felt vindicated. As if I did deserve it. Yet, somehow my name being on the back of that paper taunted me as though I did not measure up. Why was my name last? Instead of being grateful, the safety patrol "list" became the idol where I bent my knee. I fell down at the altar fast and hard. Pride was the victor and I was it's slave.

Now that I have a relationship with Christ, through His work, His atoning work, I still succomb to the altar of self. Yet I see it now, through the Holy Spirit's help and I don't have to remain at that altar. I go to another now...the altar of grace.

An altar that cost God everything, His only Son. God. Became. Flesh.

Dying for this sinner. A safety patrol, man pleasing, self exalting, glory craving gal.

"For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ." Romans 5:17

Dear Jesus, You are my hero!