Isaiah 61:4-7
H,
Well, perhaps we can put
that down to the feeling we have that if we do not get what we truly want we
will be unhappy. We are always making these sort of shady deals with God. His
reply is absolute silence. We still have to reach the end of ourselves.
The deal we want to make is
something like this: “I will respect your rule over my life and plans up until
a point but I reserve to right to be like myself. I do not want to be an
imitation of anything. I want to be real”.
This is stupid on two main
levels. The first is easily a C.S. Lewis quote:
-there are no real selves
outside God.
The second is that we are
called to be an imitation of the person who is all of our best selves combined.
That person is Christ. There is no illumination in trying to be like anyone
else. There is a sense in which we mean we do not want to imitate jerry curled
pastors and shady looking predator priests. We do not want to be anything fake
or oblique, we want to be rounded and sure. Well, we are not as original as we
think we are. We are blindsided by our human nature. The best of us, walk
humbly through the grace of turning from horrible to whole. The worst of us,
you and I included, find the things that are bright but fake and let them
shine. We construct a wall between ourselves and what is true. We fake it but
we have become so good at it that even our bouts of authenticity are just
another level of control. We know we are fake. Deep down inside us, in those
places where we do not dare go, we know we are not humble and we are not whole.
We are blessed that these
are the crypts in us God still wants to painfully pry open. We are blessed that
He loves us.
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