The Label-Maker

When I turned seventeen, I was highly offended. I'd taken a day-trip with my family and my best friend Kim to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to celebrate my birthday. While there, I got on the Sky Lift with my friend and rode the chairlift up the side of the mountain where there was a lookout and gift shop at the top. I was laughing with Kim about something, and a man, sitting nearby on a bench, broke randomly into our conversation.

"How old are you?" he asked out of the blue.

I suppose I could have ignored him, told him it was none of his business, turned the question around on him and asked him his age, etc, but I didn't. It was my birthday, after all, and I was pretty proud of my new number. "Seventeen," I told him.

He nodded thoughtfully. "I wondered," he said. "Your voice sounded older, though you look like you're about twelve."

Ha! I remember fuming to my friend the entire way back down the chairlift. How dare he tell me I looked twelve!!!

Whatever social faux pas the man had committed, however light and glancing his comment, his identification of me as a "twelve-year-old" stuck with me. It made me second-guess my appearance in the morning when I looked in the mirror, as I studied the contours of my face, as I checked my behavior at the door anytime I went anywhere. Did I act like a twelve-year-old? (At that point... possibly). 

See, the man had labeled me, and I, in my naivete, allowed that label to stick to me.

I know many of you have read, or at least heard of Max Lucado's Wemmicks. To sum up, the Wemmicks are wooden people, carved by the Wood-Carver Eli, who give their approval or their disapproval by putting stars or dots on each other. If a Wemmick does something extraordinarily well, they all rush to stick stars on that Wemmick. If a Wemmick messes up, all the Wemmicks run over to put a dot on them. It's not until one of the Wemmicks named Punchinello spends time with Eli the Wood-Carver, who reminds Punchinello that he made him special... that neither stars nor dots stick to him any longer.

This morning, I focused only on a short section of Scripture, the ending of the story of the Samaritan woman. I mentioned in yesterday's blog post that she was one of the first missionaries. When she'd waded through her struggle, and Jesus told her: "I Who speak to you am He," she'd stepped into her faith, believed what He'd said to her, and ran to tell everyone else up at the town of Sychar what had happened.

Now, in John 4:39-42, the Samaritan woman heads back to Jesus with a slew of people, who want to see for themselves the author of this radical change. See, they know this woman. She's been there for a while, and there are at least five men among them who can attest to her faithlessness in marriage. They've labeled her. They've found her pigeon-hole, and they've kept her there.

Because of that label, she has been coming to the well at noon rather than in the morning, coming to get water by herself rather than with friends. She has allowed the town to call her what she has been: 

Unfaithful.
Cheater.
Divorcee.
Fornicator.

She's walked around for years with a big scarlet letter on her clothing, to be shunned and rejected by everyone.

But now... there's a transition that we must see here. The woman who left Sychar at noon and headed down to the well... is not the same woman who runs back.

Now she's met Jesus, Who, in her words, "has told her everything she ever did." The woman who sprints back into the town has taken faith in the man at the well like a shield and runs with it. Faith with feet. She doesn't keep the news to herself; she has to tell everyone about it. So great is the news, she can't keep it to herself. It's bursting from her.

So the woman who runs back has some new labels:

Changed.
Redeemed.
Loved.
Accepted.

Now it doesn't matter what the people in town have called her; she knows what Jesus has called her. She believes, and her very next action, before any more words are spoken, are born out of that belief.

She has to spread the news. 

Look what happens as a result of her belief! 

"Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman's testimony, 'He told me everything I ever did.'" 

All the labels the people in that town have stacked up regarding this woman, they must push aside before this new name: "He told me everything I ever did." 

From the old, new. New Creation. New Creature. Remade. Born again. Child of God. 

Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:16 to watch our labels: "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view." He tells us to look for our heavenly labels in verse 17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

Twenty-four years later, I suppose I've forgiven that man in Gatlinburg... maybe... ;)

And I'm thrilled to say that at the ancient age of forty-one, I no longer look twelve. I've accepted the smile lines and the crows feet and the age spots that have arrived over the years. My hands are no longer smooth, and my skin sags just a bit where it didn't use to.

Those aren't the things that count. What does count are the labels I've gotten from my Savior, the only Label-Maker Who matters:

Loved beyond measure.
Daughter of the King of kings.
Faith-filled.
Forgiven.
Accepted.
A new creation.
Delight of God.
Bride of Christ.
Sheep of His flock.
Vessel containing the all-surpassing power of Christ.
One for whom the Savior has died.
One who will see the face of her Lord.

Isaiah 62:2,4: "You will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow... No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah (my delight is in her) and your land Beulah (married), for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married."