When I was about 12 years old, I was baptized one Sunday afternoon. About an hour later, someone closed the little finger on my left hand in the car door. The pain coursed through my body with every beat of my heart. I went back with my family to Dad's church to spend some time before the evening service. I was sitting at the rear of the church at about 4:30 in the afternoon when a woman from the church named Mildred walked in. She looked at me with what appeared to be sympathy, and I was glad to find someone who understood my pain. But she destroyed the moment when she said, "Don't you think you should get out of the church with those shorts on?"

I'll never forget my 12-year-old disappointment at how the woman had ignored the important by concentrating on the trivial. Later, I would see other abuses and misuses, mistakes and misteps through my hundreds of times in church as a pastor's daughter. Some even nixed movies, dancing, and cutting hair.

But despite the poor experiences I had, I came away with something good. I realized that I was to be set apart, different from those who did not know Jesus. The command is clear: " 'You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy' " (Lev. 19:2).

While the command is clear, however, how to bring set-apartness about is not always as clear. The word "holy" from this Leviticus verse is the Hebrew word qadosh, which means "set apart, dedicated to sacred purposes, clean, morally or ceremonially pure." It's about setting apart something or someone for holy purposes. Holiness is separation from everything profane and is a dedication to everything holy and pure.

Sometimes when Dave and I can't seem to find one good movie to watch in our home without profanities abounding, I long for set-apartedness. When I watch the watered-downness of the Christian message and the compromise of the Christian walk that has come to be accepted, I long for set-apartedness. While we shouldn't be weird or abrasive or a turn-off to those who we want to hear the message, we should be different. We should reflect the fact that we are holy, and that by its very nature sets us apart.

Several years ago, I dreamed I ran away and wandered around for a long while over a wide area. At last I found my back to a right place, a familiar place. It was the place where my dad pastored and the place where I learned to be set apart. I've been remembering that dream a lot these days. Even though Mildred and the others in our church sometimes did things the wrong way, they did them for the right reasons. They had set themselves apart, and they were teaching us to do the same. We need to ask God to show us what that means for us today. We need to ask Him to show us how to concentrate on the important and ignore the trivial in ways that will best set us apart.

"Be qadosh as I am qadosh."

That's what God is saying to us today within every compromising circumstance we find ourselves. "Dedicated to sacred purposes, clean, morally or ceremonially pure." If what you're doing and taking part in isn't accomplishing that, then stop doing it and do do whatever it takes to be set apart as God is set apart. Every day in evey way, let becoming qadosh be your goal.