Mine, Mine Mine…
Song of Solomon 6:3 New King James Version (NKJV)
3 I am my beloved’s, And my beloved is mine. He feeds his flock among the lilies.
When my children were younger they both went through a phase (as most children do), where they claimed everything as theirs. They would lay claim to anything that they saw that tickled their fantasy. It was funny as they grew a bit older, the mine was sometimes unspoken but still just as loud as the screams or forceful declarations that they once proclaimed when they were two and three years of age. As they would sometimes jockey for position to see who would get to sit next to me, or as they would try to get closer to me than their sibling and hold onto my purse strap handle as we walked into a store or event. Even as a young adult, if one is in need of something and borrows from the other, I will occasionally hear “that is mine, I want that back.” The cries of mine can be so strong and so loud; they are declarations and affirmations claiming possession of an item, a person or a position.
I was talking with my two little sisters (both, adopted by love and choice), and we were talking about how Jesus has become fashionable, we claim God, we like to say He is ours, but yet we are live our life not in a posture that identifies that we are His. For some of us, we say God is ours when we are hurt, embattled in a crisis, but when all is right as rain, we barely make time to say good morning to Him. For others of us when we want God to move in a specific way, whether it is to open up a door, or to pay someone back, for upsetting our apple cart then we become very verbal, with our “Mine.” But the question is why isn’t God ours all the time? Why do we need something to motivate us into His presence, why aren’t we persistently and consistently there? Why don’t we treat Him like we treat a new love interest, we are quick to exclaim, “That is my man,” or “that is my girl.” We often seem more apt to place ownership on things than we do on God that is “my house, my car, my job, my clothes.” But funny enough we forget that without God, we would have none of it. God claims us as His, why is it so hard for us to do the same for Him and really mean it, really live it, really exemplify it? This is probably because it would mean that we would not get our way all of the time. Because it would mean that we would have to trust and rely upon someone other than ourselves. If we pulled at God and said mine, it would mean that we would have to live a certain type of life that requires of us, and convicts us into a place of obedience and submission.
Most of us want to say “mine, mine, mine when it comes to God when it is convenient. Many of us do not even realize that we are saying by the way that we live that we are not God’s, by our actions, our attitudes, the choices we make and the level of disrespect we show Him, by our active levels of disobedience in specific areas of our lives. You see God is God all the time, He changes not, why is it that we aren’t the same way. Why aren’t we claiming Him all the time and changing not? Why does our ability to say God is ours tied up in our emotional state, who is our friend or not, what crisis we are in, or what we need or don’t need at that moment? We should be holding on to Him daily as if our lives depended on it, screaming by our very actions, choices, words, living and obedience that He is “mine,” and we are not scared who knows it. I read something recently in a book my Bishop had written and He said we can never have two heads, for then it is a monster…too many are claiming God as Head and trying to be in control and the head as well…and then we are wondering why, we have a mess on our hands and things are all out of wack and alignment. If we say God is ours we should live like it and act like it, not just at our whims and when it is convenient, but all the time. My Grandma James use to say on a regular basis, He is mine and I am His and I love Him so, and she lived so all who came in contact with her knew just that. They knew that with all that she was her life screamed of God, “Mine, mine, mine!” Does yours?
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