A Fool's Cry: Through a stained glass window

Friday, July 10, 2009

Through a stained glass window

One of the hardest things for me, as a follower of Jesus the Christ is
to be transparent. My natural, default setting is put up walls. I
worked hard my whole life at keeping people out, or at the very least
at a safe distance.

I juxtaposed this with my verbal proclaimation that I was in fact a
Christ follower. I kept everything in darkness even though Christ
compells us to the light.

I became adept at superficial forms of intimacy, I knew how to care
deeply for others but often refused them that same privilege.
Relationally I could and often was described as emotionally
unavailable. I would deny people transparency and justify it by saying
I'm merely comfortable with silence.

Then Jesus came along and wrecked everything.

He knocked over my house of cards with a simple question.

If you don't let people see you, how will they see me?

And with that the cards began to flutter to the floor.

Now the cool thing about Jesus is, he doesn't destroy our paradigms
and leave us with nothing, instead he restores them.

You see, if you were to spend your whole life, all your savings, sold
everything you had to build an art gallery and bring in exquisite and
beautiful prices. Would you then spend as much effort as possible
boarding up windows and bricking the door shut, and continue to tell
people about your wonderful gallery?

Sometimes this is what we do with Jesus. We keep him inside our/my
bricked up houses with stainglass windows(see how I tied that in
there, pretty clever) that may look really good, but no one knows
what's going on inside.

Jesus showed me that's what I was doing. He also reccommeded that I
stop. I figured what the heck, I'm not the carpenter here.

Matthew 5:14

14"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be
hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.
Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in
the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that
they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven

Sent from my iPhone

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