CHiPs and Dukes of Hazard

As I was driving to pick up my daughter today, I happened to espy something I hadn't seen since, I think, the 1980's. Rushing past a major intersection, a police officer, driving a motorcycle, looked through his reflecting aviator glasses at me. I thought I could see myself in the lenses, but more likely I saw a reflection of my past hurrying, scurrying by me.

Twenty-five or so years ago, growing up in the country where the only entertainment was to either be outdoors or ... well, nothing (we only got three channels on the TV and two of them were CBS), my siblings and I used our imaginations to get us through the long summer hours. When we were done hunting grasshoppers with our bb guns or making a fort in some hewn logs in the back field, it was time to pretend we were someone else.

Two television shows which actually entered our airspace (right before bedtime at 8:00) were on separate nights of the week. CHiPs, which to my knowledge was an acronym for California Highway Patrol, and the Dukes of Hazard flowed from the set to our eyes. Because these two shows were so influential, my brother, sister and I always tried to pretend we were the characters of these shows. Sometimes my brother and I had to fight over who was going to be Ponch. Neither of us wanted to be Larry because it's not a cool name as Ponch - plus, Larry had a mustache, at times, and neither of us ten year olds could grow one (I did try once, but the grass made my nose itch.) My sister always had the part of Randi - I think that was her name. All that I really remember about Randi was her taking off her helmet and waving her hair around like she was in some kind of shampoo commercial.

As for the Dukes of Hazard you can probably guess Bo, Luke and Daisy. My parents had an old 1970's green Oldsmobile whose spirit had gone to heaven and whose body was rusting by the chicken house. Hour after hour we spent sliding across the hood, climbing through the windows and pretending to jump the green "General Lee" over the chicken coop. There was so much delight in being someone else - no worries that I didn't have a license or even an inkling how to drive a car - it was simply an opportunity to have a different name and occupation.

We, as Christians, created into new people - we are created to be different. "Therefore," Paul written in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come!" We have come to understand, and this is not even in the pretend world, that we have become different people. Because of the gift of God through Christ, we become different and set apart for a different kind of life - one lived to serve; to serve God and serve others.

In Paul's letter to the Galatians he goes so far as to even say that it is not even we who are living any more but Christ who is living in us. Gal 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave his life for me." When I take even a short step back from the confrontative reality of my life, what an incredible thought to realize that it is Christ, whose very breath, inhales and exhales in my existence. That is when I realize that pretending to be someone else is not really a necessity. I don't have to mask my existence portraying a reality that only lives in my imagination. The reality is, I move through God's grace.

That old green Oldsmobile exists only on the farthest banks of my memory, but the past inspires my future. Larry and Ponch, Bo and Luke - whatever. It is Christ's life who I live in and he in me.