Saturday, July 24
For the ways of humans are before the Lord…
—Proverbs 5:21a
We sometimes charge through our lives with a kind of arrogance that declares we are the keepers of our inner thoughts and intents.
It may be because we want to be enclosed within ourselves. It may be that we want the bad things we've done in our lives to remain behind a thick drape secrecy. It may be that we don't think our inner lives are worthy of being center-stage as the curtain is parted. It may be that we are unaware and unconcerned about the contents of our interior lives.
Or it may be that we don't want to give anyone (including, and maybe especially, God) the opportunity to peek over the fence into our inner backyard. Unfortunately, such arrogance isolates us.
In a prayer used in the Episcopal Church we hear the words, "Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid…" These words, like the words from Proverbs 5:21 above, seem at first like an intrusion or invasion of privacy.
God becomes, in our minds, a kind of invisible spy who is tracking, even stalking, us, peering unchecked into the private caverns of our mind and heart. On further reflection, however, there's a relief, a release, a real freedom in being completely and fully known.
When God's eye takes in everything about us, we are no longer isolated and alone—no longer left to negotiate our way silently and stealthily through the rocky landscape of our soul.
When we are known we are free to be who we truly are. In the grace of holy presence we no longer need to cower and hide from God or ourselves.
O God, let your eye roam freely through me exposing and loving me into the freedom of internal honesty.
These Signposts originally appeared on explorefaith in 2003.
