[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, February 5, 2014

[Paul]

Hello and good day once again to all my loyal readers on this hump day, the middle of the week at least in most of the world.  I hope that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that you all are doing well.

Peter Lundell today provides a somewhat sobering article that we all should take to heart in one way or another.  It's entitled "Seeing Past Our Reflections" and is rendered as follows:

Jesus said that if we see Him, we see the Father.  Yet seeing Jesus can be like walking up to a bank.  Every time I go to a bank, I approach a glass door.  When I look through the glass, I see people inside.  But I also see my reflection in the glass.  And on a bright day, I see my reflection more than the people inside.

Sometimes that happens with how we see Jesus.  Imagine Jesus standing in front of us.  Effects of two thousand years of doing church can subtly become like that glass.  We can see Jesus, but when our focus strays to busy activity, church agendas, or assuming that Jesus will fit into our expectations, we begin to see ourselves more than we see Him.  We assume we see Jesus, when we may actually see reflections of ourselves superimposed over the real thing.

Is it any wonder that the church's expansion in modern, wealthy nations leveled off long ago? It happens when we remodel God into our own image.  We rationalize a materialistic lifestyle and even ask God to bless us with more stuff.  We act as if God gets riled about the same issues we do--and ignores the same ones we do.  Go anywhere and you'll find people putting their values and assumptions, or their ethnic and national identities, ahead of the faith they profess.

Some of us have been looking at our own reflections a long time.  And some of us have found how liberating it is to see beyond them.  Seeing past our reflections can change our lives.

How might you have mistaken your own reflection for Jesus? And how have you seen Him, the real thing? May you see Him, really see Him.

And there you have Brother Peter's short but poignant article for today.  I hope that it, in the words of every "Unshackled" radio broadcast, made you "face yourself and think."

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow there will be another Daily Thought message for you.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul