Recently as I walked slowly down an aisle of the grocery store, a woman stopped to complement may hair style, which was a braid wrapped around my head. I thanked her and then she said, “The Bible says that a women’s hair is her glory!” I was surprised, and quickly answered, “It also says that we shouldn’t wear braided hair.” (1 Timothy 2:9) I was again surprised that she became agitated and threw up her arms and said, “If we were perfect we wouldn’t need a Savior, but we have one!”

This conversation was so strange that it has stayed in my memory and comes back from time to time. The Bible has much to say about being overly concerned with “externals”: “Do not love the world… the world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”(1 John 2:17) The writers of scripture are conscious that everything on earth can be a “snare” for our faith, including braided hair, but Paul especially asserts that “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are constructive.” (I Corinthians 10:23)

The balance of freedom and obedience is in the very fiber of Christian life. Just as freedom increases for a child as he or she grows up, our earthly journey is a growing up toward God, always accompanied by His Spirit, as children are accompanied by their parents in growing up.

That day in the grocery store neither of us spoke a really true or edifying word. We both tacked a Bible verse onto a point of view producing nothing but irritation, the very thing Paul warns against: “No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.” (I Corinthians 10:24) That is because Someone Else is the real “Way, and truth, and life.”(John 14:6) , and the only One whose opinion really matters on every issue in our lives.

Love in Him,

Prue