Mimes

Jeremy and Kimberly and girls have been with us for the past week. During this visit Shelby and Darby have often said to me, “You are just like my daddy.” Finally after hearing this several times, today Cheryl corrected one of them and said, “No, your daddy is just like your papa.”

The first thought that came to my mind when she made that statement is that Jeremy is like me because of DNA—Deoxyribonucleic acid—the self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. But, there is more—Jeremy is like me in many ways because he spent the earliest formative years of his life living with me and his mother and siblings.

The girls were referring to things like something that I might say in a given situation that their dad would also say, or how we both peel a tangerine, or how we season turnip greens. Jeremy learned those things because he lived in our home and was influenced by his parents, not necessarily because of DNA.

I have been thinking about the very familiar verse in Ephesians 5:1—“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” I looked up the root word in Greek and Latin for imitate and found that it has the same origin as mimic or mime.

Just recently someone asked me about an area in London, and I talked to them about all the mimes who perform in the public square in this area. What do mimes do?  They don’t speak, do they? They express themselves without saying a word, but when they are trying to get a message to their audience, they express it in such an exaggerated manner that you don’t miss their message.

To be an imitator of God is not about actions that I do for God. It is about actions that God does through me. How does God do things through me? First of all I must be His child—I have given my heart and life to Jesus Christ. Then, I must obey His commandments. What is the greatest commandment? I must love the Lord my God with all my heart, my soul and my mind and I must love my neighbor as myself.

Be imitators of God…then I must love the unlovely. I must love someone who I don’t think is worthy of my love, but he was created in the image of God and God loves him as much as He loves me.

The old hymn says it for me: “Your life’s a book before their eyes, they’re reading it through and through.”