3.16.2008

Psalm 51:7b, 10-12, 17
… wash me and I will be made whiter than snow.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Hello friends-

I hope that this finds you well, and learning from our Lord. Many of you are going through seasons of breaking from classes and if you happen to be one of those people I hope that you’ve been able to rest! (in any case, I hope you’ve been able to rest)

To lay it out there, recently I’ve been finding it somewhat difficult to focus on Christ. There are many things going on in my life that vie for my attention and other things that should have attention but do not properly have it. There are obligations to be fulfilled and quite frankly I’m tired and feel like the joy is getting squeezed right out of me. I’m left to complaining and upon that realization I know I’ve been ungrateful.
As I continue to plod through the Chronicles of Narnia, I find more snippets here and there that resonate with my Christian experience. In one of the books, there is a character that ends up getting turned into a dragon quite unexpectedly. None of the others know what to do with him, and he stays in this condition for quite some time – miserable all the while but trying to make the best of it – before he encounters the Lion and is brought to a pool of sorts. Before he can enter the pool Aslan asks the dragon to undress. (What a silly thing to do, to ask a dragon to undress!) Like the skin of a snake is shed, the character peeled off his scaly skin. Stepping out of the skin completely, the character is dismayed to find that he is still a dragon. Thus he tries again, and again, and after the third time the Lion speaks up. Here is how this part of the story goes:

“… ’You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws…but I was nearly desperate now. … The first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. … he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt.”

It’s this painful undressing that I think I need. I’ve gotten some rough edges coming back that need a good sanding down, a persona that’s getting built up that hasn’t really got the attitude of a child of God. It’s frightening when God takes away these rough patches because we’re fleshy and tender and most of all vulnerable once that toughness is peeled away – like a peeling sunburn, or after picking off a scab. But that’s the only way God can bring in His healing, when we’re the most vulnerable. Where does God need to come into your own life, to cut you deep to the heart and peel away the tough exterior?

As we move towards Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, I pray that we open ourselves to God and rejoice in His Son – what He did as Lord of all creation and humble servant to the sinner. I pray that our tough exteriors would be worn down, that we would come before the Throne and have our false personas peeled away.

In love and in Him,
Your sister
Yvonne