Removing the Mask...

O Lord, You have searched me and you know me.

~ Psalm 139:1

I play the part well. 

Don't we all?

Those of us born into this first world of affluence...

Birthed into an arena of privilege.

We delicately craft our masks for the ball.

Fashioned with glitz and flair, anything to keep one another from looking,

From seeing, what lies beneath the shell.

Because what is hidden are the truths that haunt us...

The whispers that awaken our minds in the early morning hours of the night. 

And as we rise to embrace the chaos...

We have somehow owned the false tragedy that to be a Christian is to wear the glamourous mask well...

All the while stifling the seeping darkness, the aching to be deeply known...

To be able to fall at the altar filthy, wreaking of perfumed stench, blemished and broken.

We bite the bullet that silences our souls, purchasing the weapon that tells us...

You will never be enough.

You must be more.

And as we dance our appropriate dances, a hungry world awaits.

Our children watch and study the moves that win our applause.

And a Father's arms reach longingly.

For even the darkness is light to Him.

And our little ones flee in rebellion because they too learn to repeat the mantra,  I will never be enough.

And the broken lost lose heart because all the pennies they scrape together could never earn them a place at the ball, though they would give their lives for it.

Failing to understand that to wear the mask is to sell the soul.

Friend, remove your mask with me.

Know me, and be known.

Perhaps our place on the ladder has heavied our poverty of soul.

Dance with me.

Not the scripted advancement, purposed with an end.

But with abandon and gracious delight...

Twirling to the cadence of the One from whose presence we can never flee.

...That for which you were made.

The World is watching. 

They are waiting on the edge, straining to hear the ancient song stifled by our masks of religion and duty.

They are searching for the tune that reminds them they are fearfully and wonderfully made, designed in a secret place, hemmed in on the wings of the dawn.

So remove your mask with me and dance in His beauty ~