Matthew 23:27 - "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness."
First, y'all watch out. My son turns fifteen today. New driver on the road!
Now, on to the encouragement. But let's start again with "Watch out!" Watch out because it's so easy for reality (whether destructive forces or God's blessings) to slip past us and get whitewashed and covered over by the subtle deceptions of the world.
Here's an example. I've started reading "The Big Truck That Went By" by Jonathan M. Katz. Katz tells tales of great suffering by masses of Haitians from the deadly 2010 earthquake that was centered in Port-au-Prince. In particular, many Haitians in the city thought that the history-making quake was merely a "Big Truck That Went By" because they were so accustomed to their poorly built, multi-level residences shaking like a leaf as big trucks went by daily. Though they couldn't have done anything about it, it's scary to think how masses of people couldn't tell the daily from the deadly.
Watch out because it's so easy for reality (whether destructive forces or God's blessings) to slip past us and get whitewashed and covered over by the subtle deceptions of the world.
How do we keep this from happening? Of course, the most important way is to stay in God's Word daily which is a vertical, us-to-God practice.
But there's a horizontal, us-to-others practice that's also very important, namely, searching one another's souls. In a nutshell, to search one another's souls is to acknowledge that all of us have stuff (that's just below the surface of our public persona) that's been white-washed. It's stuff that's been covered because of the values of this fallen world: in sum, we value things and achievements more than people. So people whitewash and cover the questions and agonies of their soul for fear that they won't measure up, for fear they'll get fired, for fear that people will think they're weird, for fear that a spouse will leave or grown children won't come around, for fear that they'll wind up alone.
Tragically and ironically, the result of white-washing, covering up all our soul-ache and brokenness is the very thing that was feared: the result of the cover-up is that people wind up alone.
Oh, yes, they're surrounded by people, but they're people who are doing the exact same thing: covering up. They're the people in your neighborhood, your workplace, your grocery store, your school, your pew at church, your home, and your mirror.
And here's all we need to do to attack this white-washing that is destroying the soul of our world, our nation, our families, and our own selves. All we need to do is ask, "How are you doing?"
And mean it.
That's what God does for us in Jesus.
So that we can, in Christ's love, do the same for one another.
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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