...outlandishly wide

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let Me answer prayer in you and you in Me?

John L. Bell and Graham A. Maule, 1987

What would be the impact on a life of ‘leaving self behind’? What transformations could happen from walking away from the mirror, and looking out the window, then walking out the door? How might old patterns be broken and rebuilt through new pathways of truly selfless service?

In this hymn full of questions, challenges arise. Two of the most challenging questions are set loose in this verse. Is the way we care for people affected by the demeanor of the needy? Can we care for both those to whom we are naturally drawn, and for those who may annoy, anger, or repulse us--showing the generous love of a God who loves us fully at our most unlovable? This question has me returning to take a look in that mirror I was talking about earlier.

Likewise, how prepared are we to be outcast for how fully, and how freely, we love? I have been challenged to see how very many times in the gospels Jesus faced resistance and anger--not for restricting his circle of love, care, and acceptance; but for the times he drew his circle outlandishly wide. Are we ready to love so deep and wide that our lives send people (even people that look like ‘our people’) running for cover…and throwing stones?

And what if all of this turned out to be what prayer looks like, with skin on?

...behind the mask

Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

*

 Lord, Your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

--John L. Bell and Graham A Maule, 1987

Mardi Gras is a couple of weeks in our rear view mirrors, but I still come across strings of purple beads tucked between the cushions in my sofa, or under the seat of my Honda. I know for a fact I’m still working the Fat Tuesday pancakes off my hips (Shakira preached truth when she said “hips don’t lie”). And if you follow the Mardi Gras pageantry in New Orleans (or in Mobile, where Mardi Gras is even older), or even the Krewe de Tigris fun of a small-town Auburn Mardi Gras, you know that masks are a vital part of the revelry.

Masks allow us to pretend, to be someone or something other than who we are for a bit. They are pretense, misdirection, fantasy. Masks are fun or spooky, glamorous or mysterious.

But friends. When masks become our daily uniform, when we hide the reality of our lives--our truest joys and our deepest anguishes—from the world, and from ourselves, then our masks will be our undoing. Jesus calls us, by name, to repudiate fear’s power over us, the power that keeps us tied to the sameness of those masks. Jesus calls us, by name, to step out from behind the masks that are smothering us, to step into the uncovered truth of God’s love.

Out in the open, unmasked, there is moving, and living, and growing, in the company of Christ.