This past week would definitely go under the "rather difficult" category. It was by no means a week of ease. But God has really shaken me up and moved in my heart powerfully... sometimes I marvel at how God gets through to me. I have to say I'm not exactly humored at what it took to get to me about some truths I didn't quite grasp before... but I guess God is still pretty darn beyond me. So I'll just thank Him for speaking to me anyway.
So when I've considered this passage in 1 Corinthians before, I usually render the "keeps no record of wrongs" thing towards the people around me. I'd think about how someone's past doesn't deem their present, or their futures.
This week I believe God spoke to me. I think He pinned me down against my own walls and said to me, "Shaina Joy. If you are filled with me, then you are filled with Love. And if you are filled with Love, then you cannot keep record of wrongs. Including your own."
Hm. Wow. Talk about a punch in the gut.
I like to make sense of things. That can be a wonderful and wise character trait in someone. But I think I finally see how it can be a problem. Because sometimes I take every mistake I've made, or every mistake someone else has made towards me (yeah selfish, but I have a good memory sometimes to my detriment), and craft the pieces together. But what I'm really doing is making a kaleidoscope of every pain and hurt I've experienced, and seeing only them.
The dictionary definition is this:
kaleidoscope |kəˈlīdəˌskōp|
noun
a toy consisting of a tube containing mirrors and pieces of colored glass or paper, whose reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole when the tube is rotated.
So. I suppose you could say I enjoy making kaleidoscopes out of the broken glass from a broken heart, and broken expectations, and broken trusts, and broken understanding, and tack them into a construction where their reflections collide and rotate over and over, reflecting each other, and only intensifying their impact through being grouped side by side. A kaleidoscope.
But it's a toy. It's not a tool. In no way is it a tool. And yet, that's what I try to use it as.
Whatever I deem as "wrong" in my life, the things I do, or the things others do that affect me, those are pieces of glass that I have the option of collecting and attaching into my hand-crafted kaleidoscope.
And because I'm proud of it, proud of the work of my hands, I use it a lot.
I try to use it as a helpful tool. I try to use it as a telescope to see what lies in front of me. I try to use it as a microscope, to see things more closely.
But it's a toy.
And so that's where I am. My Kaleidoscope before me, all my years of work... it's time to discard it.
Instead, each piece of broken glass, from every broken heart, every broken promise, every broken piece.... each could be lined along the path that leads me right back to God. Behind me. Leading me to God. Behind me. Not anywhere else.
And so Love keeps no record of wrongs. When we're filled with Love, whatever we call "wrong," should not carry any adhesive whatsoever. None.
So I feel like I've taken a hammer to my kaleidoscope, and smashed the pieces of brokenness open so that they reflect the light and not each other.
Ephesians 5:13 says "But everything exposed by the light becomes visible," and how true it is.
So smash open your kaleidoscopes, and stop collecting the broken pieces. Expose them in the Light of the Father, keep no record of them, and be filled with Love.
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