Sunday, June 26, 2011

Strangely Dim

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
-Helen H. Lemmel

As the hymn says, I do desire for the things of earth to grow strangely dim.  At least on the surface.  I say that I want my relationship with my Savior to be an all-consuming passion, I want to seek Him first and foremost, I want Him to receive all glory, and I want for me to decrease and Him to increase.  But in practice, this is so often not the case.  I'm selfish, insecure/prideful (two things I'm realizing go hand-in-hand), impatient, hypocritical.... the list goes on.  I cling far too tightly to this world and lay up treasures here instead of focusing on my eternal destination.  The Lord knows this about me.  He sees my heart of hearts.  He knows my struggles.  But because of His great mercy, He refines my motives, confronts my sin, and draws me close to Him. 

Lately, His blessings have been poured out in a manner that seems completely ridiculous.  It has been hard for me to even accept these gifts but through it He has taught me so much about His never-failing love.  While most of the blessings have been true joys, a few have come in a bit of a disguise (at least as seen through these human eyes).  A little background:  I am extremely sentimental.  I love to keep little mementos, usually in the form of paper... postcards, bookmarks, little notes... and I also love pictures.  I take a lot of random pictures to remember things by, usually on my phone.  Well, God is clearly showing me that I'm placing too much value on these things.  My heart has become attached and therefore they are my treasures.  He has had to literally pry my heart off of some of the most important 'things' in my life over the past several months.  It started with losing a few very special items out of my Bible.  They had come to symbolize an important part of my life and reminded me of what God had delivered me from.  They were good things and they were really important to me.  It broke my heart when they were gone.  And that revealed some serious problems within myself.  They were just things... pieces of paper.  Was my heart really so attached to these insignificant items that it made me sick to lose them?  I was more heartsick over lost mementos than I am over lost souls.  Wow!  Talk about sobering.  Looking back, I am so grateful that He ripped these away.  It took that to reveal a major sin problem and He continues to bring me through to deliverance. 

However, I am apparently still not free from this sin.  Just last night my phone stopped working so I plugged it into the computer to try and revive it.  I am technologically illiterate.  I had never set it up or backed up any of the information stored on it.  But I had grown to love my phone and used it to record so many parts of my days over the past six months- ordinary things, beautiful sunsets, family fun-and in one moment, it was all gone.  I loved those photos.  I loved looking through my album and remembering certain occasions.  I had blogged and facebooked a few pictures, but the rest are gone forever.  It was sickening.  But yet again, I am certain that God is using this to show me that stuff like that doesn't matter.  He is my everything, not pictures on my phone.  He is the one that gave me all those days to document... all the beauty, my family, the fun times.  Even a day later, it seems a little silly that I was so upset over this loss.  This process is not pretty and certainly not fun, but it's necessary.  I was created to bring glory to my Father and if I am making an idol out of silly stuff, then I cannot fulfill my purpose.  Though my flesh screams, "No!", my soul cries out, "You can have all this world, just give me Jesus!" 


“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Matthew 6:19-21

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