Belly Button

Belly Button

by: Roger Talbert

Romans 3:22-25

22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (NIV)

One Sunday as the Pastor was recapping his series on the importance of the many different parts of the body of Christ (the Church), he told a story about a lady and what part she wanted to be. The lady said that she didn’t need to be one of the “big parts” like the head, eyes, arms or legs any part that God wanted her to be would be great except the belly button. This hit the Pastor strange and he asked why not the belly button. She simply said that the reason was that the belly button was useless and that she wanted to be useful for God. This got a laugh from the congregation and led the Pastor into his sermon.

All through the sermon I couldn’t stop thinking about the useless belly button. I take the Bible literally and could not except that since God said that every part of the body is equally important that any part is useless. So I kept thinking about it. What does the belly button do? We all know what it did but what does it do now? Then it hit me it is a scar. Okay it’s a scar, so what good is it. What does any scar do? It reminds you of the past it reminds of a lesson. Just as a scar from a burn reminds you that what burned you was hot and that you should be careful around it, the belly button scar reminds you where you came from.

All right we all have a scar that reminds us that we are human and have a mother how does that help the church (body of Christ)? I feel that we need to look past the obvious and think of the belly button as a symbol of where we came from before our salvation. Each of us must humble ourselves and remember that we are continuing to grow in Christ and that we were not always as mature as we are now. Don’t look down on new Christian but lift them up by remembering where you came from. If we had more belly buttons in the churches and less noses sticking in the air, we would have a stronger more unified church body.

So the next time you clean the lint out if your belly button, praise the Lord that your past can help someone in the present. Are you going to be a belly button in the body of Christ? ©