facades

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Yes, I Really Need 100 Shirts!

From the time I was in grade school to the present, I’ve had a fascination with colorful shirts. I recall like it was yesterday, the first thing I bought with my paper route money was a purple shirt, flared sleeves and matching purple bell bottom jeans. I love bright colors, fancy designs, woven jacquards, and especially paisley prints, my signature look. In fact, my friends at church refer to them as Joe shirts, shirts that I would typically wear. Some might suggest I should dress more conservatively for my age. I think not! I just recently cleaned out my closet of older shirts to donate, and I still have over 100, and I just bought a couple more!

However, at my more mature age I’ve come to realize something. While I do love flamboyant shirts, lately I’ve been using them as a distraction. You see, I know what lies beneath them. For most of my life I maintained an active lifestyle and an athletic physique. On most Summer days you could find me wearing no shirts at all, very comfortable and not shy. But as I began experiencing health issues in my forties, that physique went away and my wardrobe grew ever more colorful. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror as I was haunted by the memories of how I used to look compared to the disease ridden shape I was now in. I was no longer comfortable with my appearance and I worried over how I was viewed by others. My colorful shirts distracted others from seeing what I was hiding.

I wonder how many people do the same in their lives. They create false images, facades, to hide what they really look like. This is never more evident than on dating sites when profile photos are so altered by filters that the real person shows up unrecognizable. We do whatever we must to hide our insecurities, our weaknesses, our ugliness. We don’t want the world to see the real person behind the facade for fear they too would be as repulsed as we are. We may hide behind being a comic, buying extravagant gifts, never saying no to friends, volunteering for every event-all to distract others from seeing the real us. But what we see and what God sees, are entirely different!

I tend to look back over the trail of destruction in my wake, but God looks forward into the future plans and achievements he has in store for me. He made accommodations long ago for all my failures, mistakes, bad decisions and disobedience. In Christ, he sees us as precious, bought and refurbished by the Cross, the one he leaves the ninety-nine for. In Luke 12 we are told God sees the smallest of sparrows and that we are much more valuable than they are. In Ephesians 1 we are told that God chose us and knew us with all our imperfections, before he created the world, and that we are valuable to him because of the high price he paid for us. In 1 John 3 we are referred to as God’s beloved children. It’s almost unfathomable that the one who sees all the things we try to hide from others, is the one who loves us the most. Only God sees behind jacquards, paisley, loud colors and sequins. His son died for those very things we try to conceal, the ugliness we don’t want to see in the mirror, the scars from our numerous defeats and the haunts that we’ll never be good enough. We consider all of our disqualifications; God sees us perfected through Christ. We see ourselves as the poop scoopers in the parade; He sees us as Grand Marshalls on the leading float!

In my eyes there are not enough shirts to hide behind, but in God’s eyes I’m free to go shirtless. But I still need 100 shirts!

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Cup Runneth Over or Leaking Out the Bottom?

Leaking-cup-190x155

Can we put aside the Christian facades and be real for a minute?  Believers are expected to live out their lives with a smile pasted on their face as if oblivious to all that’s happening around them, “counting it all joy when facing trials of every nature” as if numb to pain like mindless zombies on Quaalude. But for every believer who truly lives like this, with a cup that runneth over, there’s a believer whose glass is always half empty because of the leaks in it, some due to bad choices but often times due to no real fault of their own.  And try as they might to fix the leaks and minimize the loss, they only encounter additional leaks, like a bad cartoon character using gum to stop a leak in a dam but running out of gum before running out of leaks.

It is hard to not be distracted by the reality of our circumstances. Even the Apostle Peter, whose faith was such that he was the only person to ever walk on water besides Jesus, could not help but notice the waves licking at his feet and the darkness of the watery depth that endangered him to the point of temporarily losing his religion.  This same Peter, the Rock, crumbled in fear when asked if he was one of the disciples of Jesus, to the point of denying all knowledge of Him to save his own skin. Thomas, referred to by some as the doubting Saint, was a man like Peter who lived life for three years in the footsteps of Jesus, heard His messages first hand, witnessed His miracles and sat in on the intimate lessons Jesus taught His disciples.  But when faced with the physical evidence of torture and death that his eyes could not deny, Thomas doubted that Jesus could really do what He claimed He would, and had to be shown physical evidence that in fact Jesus did exactly what He said.  I don’t know about you but I can freely admit I am no Peter or Thomas.  And so the cup leaks.

I am not convinced that God is impressed with our brave fronts or the smiley masks we hide behind when faced with unwanted changes or calamity. In fact it reads in Psalm 34 that “God is close to the broken hearted”. We can sing and proclaim all we want “Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering..” on the outside but there are those times when our spirit fails us, when our drive and passion wane, and just uttering the name “Jesus” is a challenge.

Leaks come in many manifestations-physical illness, unemployment, failed businesses, unwanted divorce, criminal victimization, and those unmentioned “testing of our faith” that all of us need but none of us want. The outward evidence of the Apostle Paul’s faith is recorded-he healed the sick and raised the dead just as Jesus did!  But the inward evidence of his faith told another story.  He had physical ailments that he was never healed of and endured them until his death only by God’s grace.  Ah, and in my Shakespearean voice, there’s the rub.

Those things that God allows into our lives to test us can only be endured by a measure of grace that He gives at the same time.  In a very twisted sense, it’s tantamount to saying I’m going to cut up your arm but I’m leaving you with a year’s supply of bandages and Neosporin so you can treat the wound until it heals. In that light it sounds a bit cruel and not very God-like.  But these lessons have a purpose in bringing out a level of maturity and stability that can only come from a continual determination to keep getting up when you keep getting knocked down. That said, if I were to be completely honest, I sometimes wish God would just grant me a passing grade instead of driving me to acing the test. But that’s not my call.  Apparently He sees things in each of us that when refined, can be useful for His purpose, one we may or may not ever fully know.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a single sincere prayer could stop a leak like flex-tape, that whatever comes our way we could just say the magic prayer, quote the scripture du jour of the day and sprinkle a little faith so we could have fuller cups?  But and alas, God doesn’t work like that.  He sent His own Son into the desert for 40 days for a 3 year ministry.  Do the math-we will have trials of every kind!  But as Paul learned, God’s grace is truly sufficient.  It is the only leak stopper at our disposal and has been proven effective in studies for over two thousand years now. So if your cup truly runneth over, please say a prayer for us who have sprung leaks until such time as we can all be sopping wet and giddy from all the over-flowing spills from our respective cups of blessing.  Peace.

my soul cries out