A Bible in a Whiskey Bag

                Yesterday I participated in a memorial service for Katie, a lady I had baptized two and half years ago and who died of AIDS this month. Katie had struggled in her life with several broken marriages, drugs and alcohol, etc., but Christ had really impacted her life in the past two years. I believe now she is in the arms of Jesus. At the memorial service, several folks shared stories of how she had touched their lives. The most poignant was the story shared by two nurses from the hospital where Katie had received weekly treatments. They told us that whenever Katie would come to the hospital she would bring her Bible—neatly tucked into a blue velvet Seagram’s Crown Royal whiskey bag! That was so Katie. She was one of those very broken people, whose spirit and body had been ravaged by sin and Satan. But she found the Lord—or rather, the Lord found her. And the Lord was working on Katie, as was evident in her life. Thus, Katie was very much like that Bible tucked into the whiskey container. On the outside, she was still rough around the edges, still struggling a bit with addiction to alcohol and cigarettes, and still suffering the effects of a life lived apart from God. But tucked into that broken container was a heart for Jesus, and a love for his word that she read every day. Because of what was on the inside, the outside began to look different too—slowly at first, but more dramatically as time went on.
 

We are all a bit like Katie, aren’t we? As Christians, we are in essence Bibles tucked into whiskey bags. We are all broken, fallen creatures who, even long after we have turned back to God and put on Christ, still struggle with our brokenness. When we become Christians, the change is first on the inside. We are new creatures (2 Cor 5.17), born again (Jn 3.5), raised to “newness of life” (Rom 6.4), and given a new heart and spirit (Ezek 36.26-27). Along with our personal repentance (“change of mind”) is the power of God working in us through his Spirit given to us. An outward change must follow, as we “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Mt 3.8), but for some the change is more immediate and dramatic than for others. Some, like the apostle Paul perhaps, grow very rapidly. Others grow more slowly, perhaps more like John Mark (or Katie). For us John Marks (or Katies) of this world, however, it is not necessarily that our growth in Christ is any slower, but rather that our starting place is further back. But of course, that’s only if we are comparing ourselves to one another. Compared to Christ, we’re all at pretty much the same place—both at the start and at the finish line.
 

In keeping with the Bible-in-a-whiskey-bag metaphor, our goal is to carry our “Bibles” (God’s word written on our heart) in a golden-threaded, silk-lined Bible cover rather than a blue velvet whiskey bag. That is, our outer containers (our lives) should match up to our renewed and reborn inner selves that have been created anew in Christ. That’s the goal, but some of us have a ways to go yet, for even Paul could say near the end of his life: “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus” (Phil 2.12).

© 2007 Randy Hohf