Mine and Thine

"And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Thou art mine and I am thine."

We worry a lot about what is "mine." Like the seagulls in Finding Nemo, we can often be heard chanting, "Mine, mine, mine, mine!" Lawsuits are filed to protect property. Copyrights are written to protect "intellectual property." We make sure we know where our property begins and the neighbor's ends. We loan things only to people we know will give those things back. Children grab toys away from others and cry out, "Mine!" And, if we're really focused on it, we label everything with our name, perhaps even including our address and phone number for good measure.

It's mine.

And sometimes we even dare to talk about "my church."

Or "my God."

In our ongoing conversation with this Covenant Prayer, there is a place for "mine." Near the end of this prayer, we claim God as ours, but not ours exclusively. As the introduction to the prayer reminds us, Christ is the savior of all who claim him, who serve him. Of all who choose to relate to him. But because this God we seek is personal and not abstract, a person and not a force, we can indeed claim him as "mine," every bit as much as we can claim our parents as "ours." But he is not only mine. And that is not the end or even the most important part of the prayer.

You see, once we claim God as ours, we find he has already claimed us as his. "You are mine, God, and I am yours." In fact, we are astonished to learn we were already his. He loved us before we were born. He longed for us to know him from the beginning of creation. The Son of God came and lived and died and rose again for my sake—two millennia before I was born! The most important part of this prayer is not that he is mine but that I am his.

That declaration is, in so many ways, what this prayer has been leading to. Not that I claim God but that he claims me. I think of the many times I've been at an airport baggage claim, and how sad it is to see that one last suitcase going round and round on the carousel. I wonder where the owner went. What happened to him or her? Why haven't they shown up to claim this lone suitcase? (And sometimes, I've also wondered--why isn't that mine and where is mine? But I digress...) The good news of the Gospel is that we'll never be that leftover baggage going round and round. God has already claimed us. And that, my friends, is very good news. Even before we allow him to be our God, we are his. And he will get us safely home.