From The Shack
"THE DARKNESS HIDES THE TRUE SIZE OF FEARS AND LIES AND REGRETS....THE TRUTH IS THEY ARE MORE SHADOW THAN REALITY, SO THEY SEEM BIGGER IN THE DARK. WHEN THE LIGHT SHINES INTO THE PLACES THEY LIVE, YOU START TO SEE THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE."
"But why do we keep all that crap inside?" Mack asked."Because you believe it is safer there. And, sometimes, when you're a kid trying to survive, it really is safer there. Then you grow up on the outside, but on the inside you're still that kid in the dark cave surrounded by monsters, and out of habit you keep adding to your collection. We collect things we value, you know?"
It seems that fear and the difficulties it causes the human race, collectively and individually, continues to pop up on my radar screen...daily. It's a good reminder for me. When we are living out of fear everything will be skewed. Attempting to walk through life seeing everything in front of us and inside us through this prism of fear will keep us trapped in destructive cycles. It is a hindrance to walking in the freedom of God and extending love to the people in front of us and beyond.
I find myself in a place where I hear a constant unbroken whisper of...DO NOT BE AFRAID. It feels so much like a renewing of my mind that has been at work in me pushing out and drowning out the ridiculous voices that used to govern my every moment. It's really amazing when I think about how twisted around things had been due to living in the future and the past which in turn kept me trapped in fear every moment. These days I'm learning to live in the moment and coming to realize the fears were usually flowing from the thoughts of an imagined future shaped by a past lived in fear. Father's love for me and the security found from being at home with him again continues to shine a light into those dark places, revealing that in most cases the fears really were more shadow than anything real. If we can find freedom from living in the unreal/imagined futures through finding healing so that we can leave behind the regrets and pains of the past, living in the moment is the only place there is left to live...and Jesus is there in that place waiting for us. Vision begins to clear up as we live in the moment with him because the distortions created by the prism of fear begin to be refined. We begin to see things for what they really are and come to realize that running back into the darkness no longer makes any sense.
4 comments:
Kent,
You ended the previous entry with “Maranatha! Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!”
Toward the end of this entry you say “Father's love for me and the security found from being at home with him again continues to shine a light into those dark places,”
Isn’t what you’re talking about in this entry the personal coming of Jesus who is the light, which is available to all of us right now and kindles in us the ‘longing for a beautiful change’?
It seems that when the things I fear are compared to Jesus that’s when they lose their fearsomeness. I believe that it’s when I do that comparing that I move toward the ability to live without fear and not return violence for violence.
How I wish I knew what it is that gives people eyes to see the light. Actually, I probably do know and it’s painful. For some it’s the resurrection of Jesus for others it will be the general resurrection. We are living in the time in between. A time when living in the light is very countercultural. A time for loving others as Christ has loved us.
Thanks Diane, and there is a "now" and "not yet" aspect to all of this. I think it was the "not yet" that I was feeling yesterday. I was feeling a hurt for others suffering under the hidious acts of hate. A suffering in the world I can not stop.
Todays post speaks to me more of the "right now" presence of God available to us all. It is the light in the darkness that brings a sense of security to us personally regardless as to the circumstances we find outselves. It's an individual thing.
It was good to think about the things you added here and I have so enjoyed the things you have added along these lines on the God Journey Forum also.
"... and coming to realize the fears were usually flowing from the thoughts of an imagined future shaped by a past lived in fear"
When you put it like that it seems even more incongruous, don't it ;)
I have found a definite level of stability with this. It has enabled me to go exploring - or, more correctly, for Papa to lead me - into darker places where I am once again disorientated while he does his stuff. I tend to future trip and past trip with abandon in those times. I'm not sure how to stop doing that, and I'm not even all that concerned about it. I think the process of healing and being taken through that necessarily involves mess and mayhem.
But to always keep in mind that the orientation is coming - this is what I'm grateful for. And to know that when the orientation time is reached, it will be more full and whole because greater parts of me will be there (without sounding all Sybill-ey :) Did you see that movie or read the book? Shudder. Sally Field was just purely amazing in that role but I don't know if I could go there again.
Anyway, enough rambling. Good post and observations. It's so good to be able to share this stuff with y'all - especially when in the midst of some top flight shit of my own :)
Keep on Kentstering, Kentster.
Sue, here is what seems like another paradox. Most people would think that living in the moment and staying away from wild imaginations of the future (our culture often calls it goal setting)would be boring and adventureless. I'm finding the opposite to be the case. There wonderful adventures going on in the here and now and in reality it is the only adventure that exists. You said it allows you to go exploring and I agree with that. But the big difference of exploring in the moment as opposed to doing it in wild imaginations set in a future time is that Jesus is in the moment going with us on those adventures....and the ones in our imaginations of the future we are out there on our own.
I choose to explore in the moment, wide eyed with expectancy.
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