When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one.
...the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, His glimpse of God will be blurred - like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope.
C. S. Lewis
3 comments:
You know where I get stuck? It's dumb, but why does God still love us when we forget to clean up our mirrors? My mirror gets so dusty, because I step away from Him. It's hard for me to believe that God's always waiting for me. I'm not really asking for an answer. I know the answer logically - but can't keep it in my heart. Maybe I'm locked into earthly love. I want to find love here and now. Which is crazy because earthly love has ripped my heart out and let it die - even laughing as it watches my pain. I know God's love transcends that, but it's so hard to be patient and wait for His perfect timing.
Why God loves us is, I think, one of the biggest mysteries around. But I believe that He made us so He could love us. The love that we want to find in the here and now is just a shadowy representation of His love. The reason why we want it so badly is because we see and feel small traces of His love in it. His love is so potent, that when we catch a scent of it in the here and now, sometimes we lose our minds chasing down the wrong path after His love. He planted our need for Him deep in each of us when He made us. Earthly love, earthly peace, earthly comfort, earthly joy are all signposts pointing us to Him, but they are not Him. The tough part about this life is that it is easy to mistake the signposts for the actual destination. Everything we've ever longed for our whole life will be fulfilled when we get to really see Him for the first time. As far as our mirrors getting dusty goes, we are really very poor housekeepers. One piece of imagery that might help you is the 'living house' idea that Lewis pointed to, and I think borrowed from MacDonald, who I think got the idea from a book of the New Testament, but I digress. Imagine that you are a living house, and the inside is a wreck. You can't very well go inside of yourself and do the cleaning that's necessary for 'Someone' to live inside. Someone has to come inside and do the cleaning for you. Refer back to the post "What Vampires and God Have in Common". He will not come in and clean the house out for you, and keep it clean, unless you allow him in, and allow him to have free reign. It's my experience that this knocking on the door of our 'house' is not a one time proposition, it happens every morning when we first wake up. Are we going to allow him entry to work on our house today, and give him free reign, no matter what the cost? Or are we going to allow the self, already residing in the house, with a white knuckle grip on the doorknob to keep the Visitor out? The self knows the cost. The self knows that it will be ousted if the Visitor has His way. It really is a one day at a time ("...sweet Jesus...") proposition. The self is so stealthy and so automatic. Each day when I wake up, I find that my self, my wants, and my needs, have pushed God out of the house, and locked the door to keep Him out. Some days I'm successful at removing my self from the throne of me, other days I'm not. It is a joint effort to get closer to God, and to keep our mirrors clean. Instead of looking at our mirrors, seeing the dust on them, and equating it with failure, I think we might do better to simply ask our Father, "How can I help you clean it?" All we can do is our best, and only He (not we), really knows what our best effort is. We must ask for His help, and what he wants from us, and never stop asking. He will never ignore us, or forsake us, even when we're convinced He has. I know you weren't looking for an answer, but I hope something that I wrote might be of help.
I want to thank you for your response. I'm amazed at how much time and effort you put into it. Your words are very inspirational to me. It's human nature, I guess, to focus on our failures. I think sometimes I put on my happy mask because I don't want to dissappoint the people who count on me. I get tired of keeping my happy mask on. It's not a mask that makes me a different person - I just want everyone to always think I'm OK - that my house is clean. It gets very tiring. God already knows my house is a mess, but I still want to hide it from Him. I picture Him rolling His eyes a bit and saying, "Here she goes again." But God doesn't roll His eyes. Why do I think so little of myself? He's probably jumping for joy and with a big smile on His face saying, "Here she is again!"
I wanted you to know that your words helped me get to church tonight. Wouldn't you know that the verses the pastor was using were exactly what I needed? He was using the first verse of Isaiah 54, but I skimmed ahead and found vs 5, 6 and 10 and just started crying. Anyway - thank you.
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