Baggage-claim Carousel 6

Baggage-Claim Carousel 6

I’ve been separated from my luggage a time or two by airline error, but I still check it at the curb. I’ve never understood why anyone would drag more gear than they absolutely must onto a plane. My policy is, if I can’t wear my pajamas in flight, they don’t need a spot in the overhead bin. While this belief saves my back some wear and tear, it also assures that I spend my share of time in baggage claim.

Precisely because I have come up empty there before, I’m never certain that I’ll see my own bag tumble off the chute and onto the conveyor belt when I arrive at my destination. I’m hopeful, yes, but I don’t necessarily trust that what’s gone in will indeed come out.

On one such trip it occurred to me (while waiting at baggage-claim carousel 6) that my following-Christ life bears similar uncertainties. I know that I am his and he is mine. I know his Spirit resides in me. I’m just not always sure it’s going to come out. I’d like to be more merciful. More kind. More patient. And these qualities are his very nature, so it’s reasonable to expect they might emerge from me. But they don’t always.

Sometimes they get lost in transit and arrive later than I’d like or not at all. Sometimes what comes out of me is not his nature but my own fleshly bent toward meanness or sloth or pettiness. My own baggage, in other words. Not the better stuff of his beautiful heart. It’s in there, though.

Maybe I should not be surprised when I don’t see it, but simply more grateful when I do. When what’s gone into my heart by virtue of his great substitutionary sacrifice comes out with some measure of clarity and consistency. That’s more than reason enough to believe that it can—and will—do so again.

In the meantime I’ll be waiting expectantly for his indwelling goodness to come forth from me, trip by trip, bag by bag, day by day.

What the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

Romans 8:4, MSG