Last night my wife and I were swimming in a sea of maroon and white. The only problem was we were wearing blue. As we arrived at the stadium for the Mississippi State/Kentucky football game my wife looked around her on a number of occasions and said: “I don’t see any blue.” It was true, there were very few Kentucky fans there, as would be expected at a game such as this. While everyone we met or to whom we spoke was kind and courteous, there were many sidelong glances and small smiles, as if wondering how we made it in the gates (or, with the record of Kentucky this year, why we bothered to come).

On our way home from the game last night I was struck with a thought that developed over those couple of hours. That experience and those reactions are truly the way it is supposed to be with Christianity as well. As Christians, we are living our lives surrounded constantly by the world. We are to be in the world, but not of the world (1 John 2:15-17).

Last night, it would have been easy to wear colors that made us blend in with the crowd; to make it so that nobody could tell for whom we were pulling. However, that would not have well represented the side for which we cheered and the reason for which we came. We are to be a people that stand out as different and distinct from the rest of the world (Rom. 12:1-2). It is not supposed to be only in the privacy of our own home that there is a distinction; but in the public realms of life, our light of service to Christ should shine before men so brightly they cannot help but recognize the working of God on our lives (Mat. 5:16).

So, as we travel through life seeking to serve God, do we “wear our colors proudly?” Do we walk through the sea of the world, not with an air of rudeness, contempt, or arrogance; but simple declaration by word and deed of who we are and on what side we reside? We should; no, that wording is not strong enough… we must. For if we refuse to declare the side on which we stand now, we have no hope of our Lord pointing to us as being on his side in eternity (Mat. 10:32-33).

Are you standing out?