MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
I don’t even know how to explain this last half year, except to say that my emotions have been all over the map, and my faith has had some severe testing! I feel like all the ideas that I had of what my life should be like are being thrown out the window! What I thought I wanted, I am finding out is not what I need. But figuring this out has been oh, so painful!! I forget what the analogy was that I used when I was talking to my friend about how I felt…. But she came up with the perfect description….. I’m being gutted!Everything in me that I’ve been holding onto as truth is being stripped away!
Which brings me to the image I got in my head when she said the word gutted. It was a picture of a Jack-O-Lantern in the making. We all know that in order for a pumpkin to become a Jack-O-Lantern, it first has to be cut open…. wide open! And then someone has to take a spoon and scrape and dig, and scrape and dig, and scrape and dig God only knows how many times until every last bit of the guts and seeds have been removed. When all the insides have been removed, then the bottom has to be leveled out so that a candle can sit evenly on it without tipping over. After all of that, the face is carved out, so that people can see what’s on the inside….. I am so that Jack-O-Lantern! 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”. One word in that passage sums up what God is doing in me right now: transformation. If a pumpkin were alive and had to feel all the cutting, and scraping and pulling going on inside of it to make the Jack-O-Lantern, then I’m sure it could identify with how I feel during this time of transformation. I am learning during this time, as hard as the change is for me, that I have been looking for fulfillment from and also trying to please the wrong person. There is only One who will never fail me or abandon me, and that is God.
Which brings me back to the Jack-O-Lantern. The purpose for the cutting and gutting is so that a candle can be placed inside so that people will see the light on the inside. 2 Corinthians 4:6 says, “For God, who said, ’ Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”. And that, my friends, is the reason for this makeover I am receiving. An internal makeover. But the most important kind.This is truly my very reason for existence: To let God put the candle in me so that people will see His light.
So, as painful as this has been for me, would I change it? Not for the world! I hope that whatever I go through, people will see this change for what it is. Not me trying to sweep my problems under the rug. But me allowing God to do with me as He chooses so others will know that it is Him who is at work in my life!
God, I am so very human, and any little mistake I make can distract people from what you are doing in my life. So please help them to look past me and see your light instead! AMEN!!
POSTED BY KRISTIN AT 4:19 P
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