All about Masks…. (But not what you think)
October is here: Cooler weather, the fair, great SEC Football and Halloween. As a kid, I loved Halloween. I liked getting candy and getting to hang out with my friends in the neighborhood, but what I loved the most was dressing up. There’s just something fun about pretending to be someone or something else.
Or maybe… It’s just freeing to be able to escape who we really are.
Trying to hide our true selves from the world around us.
The reality, however, is that we still wear masks in our everyday life… just not physical ones. We all wear masks that are designed to prevent people from knowing our true selves. We present an illusion, to make it seem like we are living the perfect life. These masks are decked out with our titles, our possessions, and our achievements. We pretend that life is wonderful, even when it’s not.
So….we put on our masks, go about our business, and when friends ask how we are, we smile and declare, “Great! How are you?” The funny thing is that sometimes we even try to hide from God. But that’s nothing new: we’ve been doing that from the very beginning.
Genesis 3:8-10, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’”
The Bible makes it clear that “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight”
The freeing news of the Gospel is that in Christ, we can be fully known and truly loved.
God sees through the mask right down to the “real us”. He sees all the flaws and mistakes and failures and yet loves us completely and unconditionally. Psalm 139 tells us that God searches us and knows us. He knows us completely, from the inside out. He isn’t surprised by us. He knows every thought, every worry, every joy, every hurt. There is nowhere we can run to escape His love, no mask to hide ourselves from Him.
With God, we can stop pretending, take off our mask, and allow Him to love us. This is what we will be talking about in youth for the coming weeks.
By Johnny Brown, Youth Director