Today Deb and I cleaned windows for much of the day...but then I spent time studying how to preach more effectively and also time in Word including Genesis 1-5.
I was riveted by the phrase that before the Fall, Adam and Eve were "naked and unashamed". But immediately after they choose sin, their eyes are opened and they realize they are naked and they proceed to design a suit of fig leaves to cover themselves.
We are certainly not dealing with pornography here, nor are we dealing with ugliness...but we are dealing with fear and insecurity and inferiority and transperancy and self-consciousness and comparison and the limiting power of a broken self-image.
The "imago dei", the image of God, that they had been created in, had been their conscious reality up to this point. They lived in the glorious liberty of TRUSTING only God's opinion, His communication is the ONLY thing that defined their self-image. They danced naked in the garden in a joyful whirl of freedom.
But once sin stained their self-image they began to hide themselves, cover themselves, stumble in their relationship with each other and with God.
Washing windows made me think of nakedness and openness. We live with shutters on our lives.
Some people have the shutters tightly shut, others have them slightly open, a few have them half open, only a handful of people have ripped down the shutters opening themselves fully to God and to others. I want to live with the shutters torn down...not in a "screw your opinion of me" but in the security of... "the only opinion that really counts is God's and He loves me so fully that I can dance naked in the beauty of who God made me".
What a freedom to live without having to impress people and live responsive only to God's direction...I am not there yet...but it's the direction of my journey.
In the evening we had a great time with our pastor and his wife and kids eating bbq'd shrimp, pasta and apple crate pie!
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