“I love you more than the sun and the stars that I taught how to shine, you are mine, and you shine for me too.”Amazing how much the simplest things can bring about a radical realization – can speak truth into our lives. A cheesy Christian music song hit home with me last night when I was listening to the radio while driving around with my friend Kim. God loves us. We are His and He is ours. He loves us so deeply, so desperately, that he sent Christ to be with us. But more than that, He is sovereign. We, as humans, can understand love. (Or at least we claim we can.) But sovereignty is something most of us struggle with. God is sovereign in our lives. That means that it is His will we submit to, rather than following our own.
~Matthew West, "More"
What that also means is that God cares for us in startling ways. God taught us to shine for Him, but He also taught us to shine for each other. God places people in our lives, brings them into our inner circle, whispers in our ears to invite them into our world. They love us, comfort us, challenge us, and speak truth to us. This is no accident; it is by God’s sovereign plan that we are loved and cared for in our communities.
He teaches us to shine for each other. He brings those stars and that sun into our sky. But what happens when we are looking down, and miss the shooting star that passes by? What happens when we, instead of holding our eyes open at the brightness that our fellow Christ-followers represent, put on sunglasses and shade our eyes?
Sunglasses. Sunglasses are pretty cool and useful. Keeps the sun out of your eyes when you’re driving. You can put them on and change your look instantly. Big sunglasses, small sunglasses, pink sunglasses, orange sunglasses. Anything you want, you can find. The other useful thing about sunglasses –and everyone’s done this at one time or another – comes when you need to look at someone, and you’d just rather not anyone see you looking. You know. You want to check that guy out or see what the heck your friend is doing talking to that random person. Slide the sunglasses on and you can be sly. Upset, angry, unwilling to make eye contact? Slide the sunglasses on. Exhausted, hung-over and trying to hide it? Slide the sunglasses on.
The problem with sunglasses is that they turn your world dark. You don’t see vibrant colors the way that God intended. Which might be okay for a time, but when you drop the silly metaphor and think about it in our own lives, sunglasses are a tragedy. God created the sun to shine in our lives. God created us to shine in each others’ lives. We come with colors, and shapes, and sizes, and quirks that make us interesting, and odd and, sometimes, hard to handle. And we judge. Especially women.
Women excel at ripping each other apart. She’s too fat. She’s too skinny. She’s too tall. She’s too short. She dresses oddly. She doesn’t dress up enough. She’s too outspoken. She’s too quiet. Whatever it is, we judge. Silently, quickly. I find myself to be particularly guilty of that fact. Acerbic wit and a knife to slice a sister apart, and I’m comfortable. Comfortable with putting on my sunglasses, and looking away. Comfortable with ignoring the sun and stars that God taught how to shine; both for Himself and for us. What do we miss when we slide our sunglasses on? What disobedience to God’s sovereign will. What pithy disregard for Him.
It’s easy, I think, to write something like this. Of course we should love each other and be kind to each other. We talk about loving our neighbor and we all nod and agree. It takes much more to actually do it. To stop judging. To start loving. And I have no idea how to do it, except slowly but surely try to change the way I think and the way I speak. To take the sunglasses off and put them away. It’s something we all should do. We should strive to hold each other accountable and love each other. I’m going to start working harder. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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