Porch thoughts

You know how you might nod your head in agreement or even give some age-old advice, but when you take a real close look at your own life, you see the big hypocrite living in your flesh and blood.  Oh how could it be that my own reflection is so foreign at times? It happens to me when I don't turn my face to the Light, and let the grime come to the surface of my soul to be
scrubbed. and cleaned. and scrubbed. and cleaned again.

it was really warm, and yes, proper safety protocol is always enforced.

 Faith is active.

uh-huh, I nod my head in agreement.

I believe this but do I really live this?  My grime is revealing; I'm selfish and most of the time I don't live this at all.  But you know if I really believe in the good news, in the good news living and present in my life now, not just as an admittance card for heaven then my life should look very different...now.

I want to sit and think, to process, to have some guy on stage with a microphone and flashy polyester suit tell me what to do.  But what I've been learning is that...faith is active! In following Christ to love my enemies (which sometimes hold the title of friend or husband), in following Christ to forgive, in  following Christ to serve the poor and downtrodden; processing happens. And that guy holding the microphone is Jesus shouting His love to me and to the world.  And I get it-it's about Jesus!  It's about His work on the cross! It's about His work!  It is not about me.

It is not about my feelings, my disappointment, my embarassment when I look in that mirror and see all that dirt.
And when, in my head, I say, "I'm tired of doing all the work"-the work of loving my husband, the work of forgiving my enemy, the work of serving.  Oh, how weak my mind, how thin my body of true wisdom.  It isn't me that loves and forgives and serves, it is Christ in me! Christ, the fullness of God and perfect man!  His power.  Not my own.  It is His love, His forgiveness, His service and yet I think I get to choose who gets to have it.

And a whole lot of the time (ok, all the time) the loving and the forgiving and the serving reveals more grime, and more of Jesus and His love and work.  And that's hard, because my pride doesn't want to see that kind of dirt.  I want to love and work and serve...and then get a pat on the back, not just the knowledge that I'm the dirtiest of them all.  See the grime?  See the dirt?  Ughhh, never-ending.

Ahh, but Jesus.  He has washed and He is washing.  And I am immeasurably thankful that God doesn't see me and my dirt; He sees His Beloved, pure and washed clean.

My prayer is that in living and working in Christ, I let the grime reveal more of Jesus and His work in me...now.

"To trust the real person of Jesus is to have confidence in Him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that He is right about and adequate to everything."  Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (my favorite book right now, eventhough I'm only 50 pages in)