Misfit?, you ask.  Yes, that would be me. I’ve always believed myself to be a misfit. Perhaps it was the experience of growing up in a silky, straight haired world as a curly, coarse haired girl. Like any good misfit I’ve spent my days seeking to blend in, searching for that place to belong.  Searching for that place where I fit, because when I find that place I will no longer be a misfit.

Now, years later, not much has changed.  I’m still out of step with my surroundings. In everything from clothes to pop culture to technology I’m a step (or two) behind and out of sync.  Oh how I long to be cutting edge, whatever that would look like?  With clothes if I can just keep them in my closet long enough, they will make a comeback, once again being “in”.  If I can just remember that they are there somewhere in the recesses of a dark closet and then find them.  (but by the time I remember and find them their time may have passed once again.)  How often do fashion trends cycle, anyway?

With technology there is no question that I am out of sync.  I will admit to you now that I have a flip phone.  Knowing that about me, I assume no other explanation is required to illustrate how far behind I am in these matters of GPSs and APPs  etc.  I mean I finally mastered email but by then everyone was texting.  I now text, but everyone is now instagraming and snapchatting.   And taking pictures?  I want a picture I can put in a frame and set on my desk.  I don’t write with a quill pen and ink pot but pretty close, I guess.  (how did they write all those letters back in the day like that?  must have taken forever?  but I digress)

But why this persistent feeling of “misfittedness”?  What is wrong with me? (besides the obvious)  Philippians 3:20-21 reminded me why I feel this way. “But our citizenship is in heaven.  And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”  Now that’s something to look forward to, something worth waiting for.  Especially since the older I get the more lowly my body seems to be.  I could use a transformation.

In 1Peter  he says that we are aliens and strangers in this world.  He says in 1Pet. 2:11 (Msg) “Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it.  Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul.”  No wonder I feel like a misfit, I am not home yet.  I am an alien in a place not my home, not my final destiny.

And yet miracle of miracles, I have found a place here where my misfittedness, fits.  It is a place full of other misfits, such as myself.  Other broken people, just like me. I actually feel at home.  I am among friends.  How can this be when we all don’t look much like each other.  In fact we look pretty different, racially and in every other way as well.  From rich to poor, educated to uneducated, those who have been incarcerated to those whose job it is to do the incarcerating,  we don’t have much in common.  (it would seem)

And yet we have all things in common.  All things that matter, that is.  It’s our brokenness that binds us together.  We bring our broken, misfitted selves to the foot of the cross together every Sunday seeking and receiving the healing Christ offers each of us.  Jesus binds our wounds and binds us together as His body here on earth,  His church.   We are His church.

Jesus is the great equalizer.  We each find our fit in Him and then He fits us all together.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal.3:28)  “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but CHRIST IS ALL, AND IS IN ALL.”  (Col.3:11)  Those words could just as easily read, ” in Jesus there is no black nor white”,  we are all His creation and He sees us all the same.  Jesus wanted our man made racial divisions eliminated then and He wants them eliminated now, in our day as well.  In Jesus we find our common ground,  we find our unity.

Peter says this about us in 1Peter 2:5,  “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  We are the living stones and God is fitting all of us misfits together,  making something beautiful out of us all, that surpasses what we would be individually.  In this way, together, we reflect His glory and light up our world.

So there it is.  I am still a misfit, but one who has found her fit along with other misfits.  Jesus fits my broken pieces together with the broken pieces of the other misfits’ lives and something beautiful is born for all to behold.  Only in our yielded brokenness can we find our fit.  It is then we become those beautiful living stones with which God intended His church to be built.  Thank you Heavenly Father that I find my “fit” in You and in Your church.

sincerely,          Grace Day