Renovation

On the 24th, on the MRT, I was reading Renovation of the Soul in Daily Practice and it asked me to consider what image I had of God, because that would really affect my behaviour and could be the root cause of my inability to be completely like Him - totally loving and holy.

And as I thought of it, God gave me such a wonderful revelation of Who He is. A tender-hearted Father who has chosen to make Himself our lover, who pursues and is jilted time and again, but gives and gives of Himself, bleeding all the way, in spite of the fact that He could have forced all of us to worship Him and already had the worship of almost every other creature. Hm... not a very eloquent decription of that rhema moment I had on that train. But yeah, it gave me a huge high for the rest of the day. Lord, You are so wonderful... You've filled my life with so much love and joy... and it's just because I've chosen my own way, chosen to listen to lies and not believe You, that I've been miserable. Even those times when it hurt so badly were precious, because then Your presence was so real and I was so secure and in the midst of hurt, I actually had the privilege of experiencing the deepest joys I'd ever known.

I heard a Christmas song a few days back about how times and places change but feelings never do. If this week was any indication, feelings are fleeting! I feel like a wreck because of a quarrel, but after I go to sleep and submit it to God, I have no idea why it mattered so much to me the night before and easily apologise. Some weeks I notice that I feel better during the day and terrible at nights... almost like feelings follow some circadian rhythm. And what seemed like the end of the world at the moment, 5 years later looks like a stroke of genius from God... and after acknowledging the grace that God gives for long enough, even the negative emotions associated with the memory are healed and the memory becomes a treasured one that brings me peace.

Even precious memories can be a mirage. It's common knowledge that bad and traumatic memories are often suppressed... or facts that we want to blind ourselves to are often forgotten. So what we thought was reality might really just have been a self-constructed Truman world, only we were the ones who built this world for ourselves.

Nothing doesn't change, except God. We'll change too... either into the image of Christ if we keep following Him or into an utter horror if we keep following our ugly desires. And we can't be certain of any reality except God.

So I hope this Christmas you'll let Him renovate your soul, and dig out all the empty facades and stacks of hay and wood that will not last, and wash you and replace it with gold and precious stones. Well, Merry Christmas! Follow That Star!