What is new?
In the dead of night, the old temptations flit across my heart and mind like moths flying in and out of a light beam; their gigantic shadows are cast upon a tapestried wall once glorious in natural light of the sun, now made a ghastly grey by the eerie light of my make-shift laboratory. I wave my arms frantically, trying to stop the moths from landing on the tapestry, before resuming my experiment: dissecting every single temptation to find out if it really is so bad and trying to reconfigure it to stop eating away the fabric of my life.
There is nothing new.
I know that, in the right lighting, the tapestry is still rich and beautiful… but right now, this close scrutiny of the inner workings of my thoughts and feelings has rendered me partially blind and numb to the horrifying fact that there are still several of them gnawing holes in the material. The quest to reinvent wrongs to make them un-wrong, in effect, attaches more value to the test subjects than to the thing actually worth protecting.
And for all my tinkering, them darn things refuse to change. My role has never been to play scientist, but to be a good steward of everything in this house by calling in pest control and following their directions.
Where did I go wrong?
Before, the shadows made me jump. Now, they just represent another thrilling challenge to already established truths. Back then, I trusted what I had been told and just scooted closer to the nightlight to watch and pray until the morning. Now, I ask “Why?” about even the most basic of instructions until I forget what the point of it all is. And everything is reduced to inanimate parts; the lifeblood which connected them to reality is cut off by a tourniquet of unrelenting and unwarranted interrogation.
What is the damage?
All of a sudden, I realise that dawn has begun to break through this dark, dark night. Not even the shutters and chilling laboratory light can hide it. The sun’s golden rays illuminate the tapestry in all its glory, reinvigorating the myriad of hues… and revealing the moth-eaten areas. I will need to call upon the Restorer to come and repair it.
How come this is how it works? Maybe I don’t have to call Him. Maybe I can break this whole process down and—
I shake my head. No. No more circular arguments. I pick up my laboratory light and tools and throw them into the bin.
I will trust the One who knows those things. I will rely on Him to help me understand them as He desires.
What I’ve learned about right and wrong, truth and falsehood, is that you can never change their nature – it’s your character that alters for the worst if you attempt it. What I’ve learned about God is that He always transcends the finite walls of the laboratory, yet has His eye upon the details of our lives.
“This God—His way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; He is a shield for all those who take refuge in Him. For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?” 2 Samuel 22:31, 32
“Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put Me to the test and put Me to the proof, though they had seen My work.” Psalms 95:7b-9
Liv'n'Hope 