Being the Only One

 I remember on the first day of the forth grade our teacher gave us large name tag stickers for the front of our desks and told us to write our names on them and stick them on a particular side of the front of our desks.  Then, she stepped out into the hallway to talk to one of the other teachers or something and we all began to do as she asked.  I printed my name on my tag and went to put it on the side of the front of my desk that the teacher had instructed.
     However, before I put it on I looked around and noticed that everyone else in the class room was placing their name tags on the opposite side of the desk than I was.  I looked over at my best friend, Andrew, who was affixing his name tag onto the desk next to mine and asked him why he was putting his name on the wrong side.  He assured me that I had misunderstood and that he and everyone else were putting their tags on the correct side of the front of their desks.
     Well, I figured that surely he, my best friend, wouldn’t tell me something wrong, and I didn’t think that the entire class could possibly be wrong with me being the only one right about it, so I placed my tag on the same side of the desk as everyone else and waited on the teacher.  When she came back in, she was mad.  She began to reprove us because not one student in the class had obeyed her instructions.  It turned out that she was telling us to put our tags on the same spots that the previous year’s students had put them on in order to cover the places where the paint had been peeled off when the previous tags were removed.  Because we had disobeyed, the ugly unpainted places on our desks would show for the rest of the school year.
     I learned a lesson that day though, and it’s always stuck with me.  Just because I’m the only one doing something the way I’ve been instructed, even if everyone else I can see is doing it another way… doesn’t mean that I am wrong.  Jesus said this in Matt 7:13-14:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

     So remember; the next time you feel like you’re the “odd one out” for holding on to the Truth found in God’s Word and His commandments, and everyone around you is trying to tell you it’s not necessary or that you’re doing it wrong… take a lesson from a one time fourth grader and just keep on being obedient and true to what the Teacher actually said.