Issue 229
Have you ever felt so out of sorts that you really aren’t acting like yourself at all? “It’s not me, this” or– “I don’t know what’s the matter with me” – can be the cry. Sometimes the real you is so buried in a pile of mess that he or she has disappeared completely. These are not moments of pleasure or pride. They are not the stuff of which fond memories are made – this is life and work at its worst when just getting up and going to work is a challenge. It may not be this extreme but each incident which pushes you in this way can sometimes so distort you that you start acting completely out of character. It’s a strange and uncomfortable place to be. Friends and family would have trouble recognising you doing something like that or scheming something so strange. Anyone who knows you well would not know you in this and wonder what went wrong.
But the truth is that sometimes we feel beaten and battered and exhausted and so far from peace as to be shell-shocked.
Several hundred years prior to the execution of Jesus of Nazareth, Isaiah gave a graphic description of the effects of the process. His face and appearance would be appalling to any who saw him, so badly damaged as to be barely recognisable as human. And so it was – his face was so badly beaten that it became shocking to all who saw him. One thing is for certain – he has been there and beyond. He was literally beaten into looking like something else. Yet his best friend, only a few years later, describes that same face as “like the sun shining in all its brilliance”. It has gone from grotesque distortion to brilliance.
This is how he works. The work of Christ affects the mundane and the profound. The work of Christ rescues the strong and the beaten up. If you are feeling completely out of sorts, beaten up, rejected and unrecognisable even to yourself, do not forget that the same power at work on the cross is at work in you – at work. He specialises in facial transformation. He, in the most radical manner possible, will put the smile back on your face and reconstruct you to be the authentic real child of the
Father that you are born to be. He has worked very hard for that.
Isaiah 52:14
14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him — his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness
Isaiah 53:1-2
1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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