Both and Neither (Romans 14:7-8)

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As a teen, I remember more than anything wanting desperately to just belong. In some ways, being in band met that need as we were all thrown together so much. In other ways, I tried to meet that need by being a part of a softball team. Sometimes those two groups collided and didn’t gee and haw, and then I felt trapped between them, wanting the people I liked to just get along. Sometimes it was the desire for a group of friends or a single friend to accept me as I was and to love me as I loved them, as it seemed I never cleanly fit into either category of friends. I was somehow both and neither. Sometimes my desire to belong was directed at finding one person who would love me forever. As an adult who had been given that one person, I still longed for close friends to share the journey with, especially when raising small children and at home alone so far from extended family while Greg worked so many long hours to provide for us. 

Belonging has always been important to me, yet my understanding of what it means has changed drastically through the experiences life has afforded me along with my Christian walk and growth.The word belong itself most often implies ownership and means when looked up “to be the property of” or even “to have relation to” in the sense that we use it, which is interesting to me. In a world where everyone wants to be free to do as they please, where freedom is prized and celebrated, there is still this inherent desire to belong to someone (or maybe “with” someone without any obligations in today’s sense, although that isn’t really what the word means). 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in light of all going on in today’s world as well as in light of running into some of my former students this week. One of them made the comment that her brother left his small hometown with a friend and is living and working away and doing well, unlike some of his friends who stayed and haven’t fared so well. This desire to belong causes all sorts of problems in every generation. When the need for belonging isn’t a desire to belong solely to God but rather a desire to belong anywhere, “to fit in,” in the sense we use it, that desire often leads to much sorrow and heartbreak and even desperation. I am fairly sure that no one would truly want to be owned by the world itself even when they might want a close relation to it. To be a slave to anything or anyone is a repugnant idea to society today, understandably; yet at the same time, isn’t that what I am to Christ, willingly? Isn’t that what distinguishes me from the world in which I live? Instead of selling my soul to the devil, I have turned it over to Christ. I am coming to understand that ultimately my willingness to be a bondslave to Christ will be something that will cause the world that cannot understand that desire, that cannot entertain a willingness to be a slave to anything, to hate me.

Along those veins, I ran across these familiar verses this past week in my reading: “For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8, NKJV). I am His. Period. I do not belong to the world or the things of the world (even though I often momentarily forget). I do not NEED the world to accept me to be happy, to have joy, to find acceptance. I already have that in Christ. I don’t NEED anything but Him. He is enough. (I am not preaching at you, just reminding myself, as I often need reminding.)


The idea that I could truly belong to anything else but Christ carries with it ownership that is unacceptable for me or really for any other Christian. When I stand before Him someday, all I want to hear is that Jesus claims me as His own, that I belong to Him as I bow my knee to my sovereign and confess to God that Jesus is Lord. When everyone bows a knee (and they will), this belonging to Christ is the one that matters. This is the belonging every soul longs for without always recognizing where the need for belonging arises. My joy right now is understanding that the past hurts of this life need not hold me or own me as I used to let them. My joy right now is understanding that in Him I have everything I always looked for and wanted. 


My freedom in belonging is not something the world will understand, but it is something to rejoice in as I contemplate and look back at what He has done and look at what He is doing now and look forward to what He will do in me in the years to come. My belonging is secure, unchangeable, not because of me or what I have done but because of Him and what He has already done. 


My prayer is that you will also know fully this joy of truly belonging, that you will want it and seek it even though I lack the powers of language to fully express His work in me, the “unrestrained fellowship with Jesus” (The Valley of Vision, p. 14) that I have had access to for years yet have never fully comprehended and pursued like I should have been doing. 


His work. His time. His gift. His love. His mercy. His grace. 


His.

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