Llamas and Jesus' Prayer

Although here in Ohio this week we were briefly teased by Spring, one morning there was a heavy frost. Up the road from our home there is a property with llamas penned adjacent to that house. On that frosty morning, as I was driving down the road and coming upon that residence, I saw in the distance in the morning sun these splotches of white moving across the yard. Drawing closer, I realized that the white was a heavy coating of frost on the backs of the llamas. My first reflexive response was, “Poor llamas; all that cold ice on their backs.” Then it hit me, “Poor nothing. They are really insulated against the cold. I wonder why they don’t make llama coats? Perhaps, they do.” The llama’s wool coat so insulates the animal that not even enough body heat escapes to melt the frost on its back. These llamas had spent the night out in the cold, not in a barn. Yet, the cold had not gotten to them. The frost on their backs was proof of that. The cold had not gotten past the outer layer of their fur. All of this reminded me of an old adage: Being sanctified from this world isn’t being isolated but insulated from it. Jesus in His prayer for His disciples of all ages was, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” (Joh 17:15). We are in a world that, if it gets into our hearts, will weaken our love for God, cool our passion for Him, corrupt our desires, and, ultimately, kill our spiritual life. The answer is not withdrawal and isolation from the world. We could not be the salt we are to be in the world if we withdraw from it. We would not be in a place where we were “holding forth the word of life.” Jesus not only prayed that His disciples not be taken out of the world, He prayed that He was sending them into the world. The answer isn’t isolation but insulation. The answer is not to build a compound in remote Wyoming and cut ourselves off from the world. The first way to be insulated from this world is to have a different nature. Jesus twice in His prayer noted that His disciples were not of this world—they had a different nature. A llama is insulated against cold because the nature of a llama is to have wool that resists cold. One truly born again has a new nature that resists this world. That new nature does not want this world. Then, there is the keeping power of Jesus. Jesus points out in His prayer that of all those, the disciples, that the Father had given Him, He had lost none except the one that didn’t stay with Him—Judas. Stick close to Jesus. He will keep you from the world and the world from you. Then, as Jesus noted that His disciples would not be withdrawn from but sent into the word, He prayed that they might be sanctified. Sanctification is a real experience. In root meaning sanctification is about separation, or could we say insulation. The sanctification Jesus had in mind wasn’t the separating the disciples from the world, but the world from the hearts of the disciples. They might be in the world, but their hearts were separated from it. I live in this world not clothed in llama’s wool, but surrounded by Jesus’ prayer. The world can’t get through that.