Have you ever noticed how little kids will talk to their dogs, cats, dolls and imaginary friends with no embarrassment or fear? Why do you suppose that is so? I recently heard a four-year old child talking with her imaginary friends in such a real and natural manner that I wondered where they were in reality.
Surely she must have someone in her life named Kerri or Kelly or Kandi because she is talking to them as though they really exist. A little later she asked her grandmother about how she handled her imaginary friends. Grandmother said, "I don't have any." To which the little girl looked at her in surprised and said with great seriousness, "Well, you had better get one then."
Open dialogue with a friend, real or imaginary, is very important to the health of our soul. Jesus said to His Disciples that, "It is useless to gain the whole world but lose your soul." Let's face it, the people of the world are in great danger of losing their souls. How dried up, desolate and desperate can the soul of a Muslim suicide bomber be to blow up mothers and their little children as they shop in open markets after their own High Holy Days of Ramadan?
Can you imagine nailing fifty or sixty committed Christians to a series of crosses as Easter comes to an end? Caesar, Hitler, Mao and Stalin might but they certainly did not do that out of their overt religious fervor. They did it because they hated Christians.
The soul is something so precious that we need to spend a bit of time tending to it and keeping it healthy, vital and vibrant. Historically counseling was called "seelsorge" or the care and cure of the soul. One thing is for sure, seelsorge requires times with God and times of resting in His grace on a regular basis.
In Ted Haggard we see what can happen when a Christian's soul dries up. He failed to take his daily dose of grace and fell into trying to manage his own temptations and the result was a disaster. He said he was too embarrassed to talk to anyone about his temptations so he shut himself off from real and imaginary friends. He must have also forgotten to talk with God as a friend and went as a sinner fearful of condemnation.
The world, the flesh and the Devil know how to keep score of our temptations and failures. The Lord does not keep account of our sins but we do. And, when we forget about His kindness and grace we try to fix ourselves and we dig into the soul until we are dry as the Gobi Desert.
Take your grace pills daily. Do not expect God to remove your humanity and temptations from you instantly or permanently. Walking daily by grace is the only thing that keeps our souls healthy. Find someone you can trust to listen with the same empathy as an imaginary friend and tell them everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment