Another Sunday, another chance to get some words out of this mixed up maze of my mind.

Today, I am thinking about how the most holy thing we can do sometimes is to entertain the possibility that we’re completely wrong. What if this is not what it seems? is not as easy question to ask ourselves as it is to ask others.

Our perceptions are often prisons. In our sin-wrecked mind’s attempt to maintain status quo, we will easily trade peace for a prison sentence. We prefer our interpretations, not because they don’t hurt us, but because even if it hurts it’s familiar. I think there’s a component of this desire for familiarity that is beautiful and helps us find Home, but there’s another side of it that is rotten and miserable and claws at us, keeping us stuck because the Enemy knows how to take anything good and turn it evil.

I have been thinking quite a bit lately: my old scripts want actors. And it is hard, so very hard, to not find them in myself and in other people who seem to fit perfectly with patterns I think I know. It helps to differentiate myself from the “scripts”. I get to choose how I want to act; that’s part of my freedom in Christ. Jesus has a better script for me, a better part for me to play. But until I see Him face to face, that script and that part won’t seem fully natural to me. I also have to be honest about how much I actually want that old familiar script to keep running. It sure does make me look like the hero of the story, albeit a bit of an underdog.

I could talk about how the script goes, but I believe I would be giving voice to lies. I have done enough of that in my life. Even if you might relate to my particular version of lies, I want to encourage you that however your script of lies goes, it’s just that: a script, a soundtrack, handed down or built over time, and not necessarily any more true than any other soundtrack from any movie you might have seen.

People wiser than me have boiled this down to: don’t live by your feelings; submit your feelings to the truth of God’s word. I am not so wise yet for that to resonate. Or maybe I am just less of a feelings-person and more of a thoughts-person. I have found that if I try to attack the individual thoughts, I can barely function. It is all-consuming to rebuff each untrue thought. What helps the most is to just completely stand the whole thing on its head: what if none of what I am thinking right now is true? What if this is just a dusty old script looking for actors? What if there’s a loving God?

What if God, who did not spare His own Son, will not also freely with Him give me all things?

What if He wants me to come to Him with my foolishness and pride, to give it all to Him?

What if His commands really aren’t burdensome? What if His yoke is really easy and His burden is light?

What if He is doing exactly what He said He would do with me?

What if . . . what if He really loves me?