I Take off the MASK!

“I will call them ‘my people,’ which were not my people; and her ‘beloved,’ who was not beloved.” “It will be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”
-Romans 9:25-26, WEB-BE

There are many times when people find it hard to feel that God loves them. Instead of feeling that they have a Father in heaven who watches over them, they feel like orphans. They feel helpless in the midst of troubles, desperate in the midst of pain.

How can they be God’s people? Does God live in the darkness where they are? Does God know this sinful world in which they live?

Day by day they struggle to survive. Their hearts get broken, their souls crushed by those who take away their dignity. They hardly see themselves holy, they live in the midst of sin! How can God be their God, their Father, their Friend?

And yet God came. God who is Light descended into the darkness where we are. He came not as a powerful king, but as a helpless child, vulnerable as we are, prone to our suffering and pain.

He knew His people. He heard their cry and He came to them.

We are a people accustomed to being orphans, to being outcast. But He sought us where we are, and pursued us even unto death itself so He can give us life. Indeed, we felt like we were not His people, but He claimed us as His own. We felt we were unloved, but from now on, we have been claimed as His beloved ones.

This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone. – Taylor Caldwell

Unless the LORD builds the house,
they labour in vain who build it.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman guards it in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
to stay up late,
eating the bread of toil;
for he gives sleep to his loved ones.
-Psalm 127:1-2, WEB-BE

Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you. – Exodus 20:12, WEB-BE

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right… You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
-Ephesians 6:1,4 WEB-BE

Honour widows who are widows indeed. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them learn first to show piety towards their own family, and to repay their parents, for this is acceptable in the sight of God… But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever. – 1 Timothy 5:3-4,8 WEB-BE

A worthy woman is the crown of her husband, but a disgraceful wife is as rottenness in his bones. – Proverbs 12:4, WEB-BE

Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. – Ephesians 5:22-23, DRA

Who can find a worthy woman?
For her price is far above rubies.
…
Her children rise up and call her blessed.
Her husband also praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
but you excel them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain;
but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands!
Let her works praise her in the gates!
-Proverbs 31:10,28-31 WEB-BE

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: That he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life: That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish. So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself.– Ephesians 5:25-28, DRA

Many men claim to be men of unfailing love, but who can find a faithful man? – Proverbs 20:6, WEB-BE

A foolish son is the calamity of his father.
A wife’s quarrels are a continual dripping.
House and riches are an inheritance from fathers,
but a prudent wife is from the LORD.
-Proverbs 19:13-14, WEB-BE

The LORD’s curse is in the house of the wicked, but he blesses the habitation of the righteous. – Proverbs 3:33, WEB-BE

Through wisdom a house is built;
by understanding it is established;
by knowledge the rooms are filled
with all rare and beautiful treasure.
-Proverbs 24:3-4, WEB-BE

Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you, and to return from following you, for where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May The LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.”- Ruth 1:16-17, WEB-BE

When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out in the army, neither shall he be assigned any business. He shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer his wife whom he has taken. – Deuteronomy 24:5, WEB-BE

But there were standing by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. Therefore when Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour, the disciple took her to his own home. – John 19:25-27, WEB-BE

I heard a loud voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with people, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away.” – Revelations 21:3-4, WEB-BE

Few things we can do in this world are so well worth doing as the making of a beautiful and happy home. He who does this builds a sanctuary for God and opens a fountain of blessing for men. – James Russell Miller

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. – Maya Angelou

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. – Edith Sitwell

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. – George Moore

Travel does not exist without home….If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world. – Josh Gates

I don’t care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together… – James Patterson

That’s what so many people didn’t understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes. – Orson Scott Card

Far more than we know, do the strength and beauty of our lives depend upon the home in which we dwell. He who goes forth in the morning from a happy, loving, prayerful home, into the world’s strife, temptation, struggle, and duty, is strong–inspired for noble and victorious living. The children who are brought up in a true home go out trained and equipped for life’s battles and tasks, carrying in their hearts a secret of strength which will make them brave and loyal to God, and will keep them pure in the world’s severest temptations. – James Russell Miller

I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion. – Jani Ortlund

Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. – Frederick W. Robertson

The light is what guides you home, the warmth is what keeps you there. – Ellie Rodriguez

But the man from whom the demons had gone out begged him that he might go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your house, and declare what great things God has done for you.” – Luke 8:38-39, WEB-BE

Sometimes it is easier for us to serve other people than to serve those in our own homes. It is easier for us to join groups for a cause or to donate funds for various institutions caring for the poor than to really take a look at those close to us and ask what they really need.

Love begins at home. It starts with parents caring for their children and for children loving their parents back. It is in being there for each other at the end of the day, sharing stories, heartbreaks, victories. It is caring for our sick folks and for our old grandparents. It is in teaching the kids and in playing with them, letting them know how precious they are because we give them our precious time.

Many times, we don’t need to look very far in order to find someone who needs our love and attention. Let us begin to look in our own families and see what we can do to make our homes the kind of refuge that it should be.

Do we really know our poor? Do we really know the poor in our own house, in our own family? Maybe we are not hungry for a piece of bread. Maybe our children, our husband, our wife, are not hungry, are not naked, are not homeless, but are you sure that there is no one there who feels, unwanted, unloved? Where are your old father and mother? Where are they?…Let us look straight into our own families, for love begins at home. – Mother Teresa

As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. – John 15:4-5, WEB-BE

God’s love flows even through imperfect people. There is good in each one of us. There is a kind of light that we reflect, a beauty for others to see. But to mistake that good or light or beauty to the Source of all Goodness, Beauty and Light is to be constantly disappointed and dissatisfied.

People can make us happy, but it is not within their power to make us always happy. People can be there for us, but it is not realistic to expect that they will be there for us each time that we need them. No matter how hard people try, they are bound to fall short in loving us.

This is why it takes much forgiveness and sacrifice to make human relationships work. Without forgiveness, how could we ever go on with each other? We can search the whole world and not find a single soul that won’t ever disappoint us one way or the other.

All of us are but branches from a vine. Cut off and by ourselves, we wither and hurt others instead of making them happy. God is the vine, the true source of life and love.

Let us strive to become better instruments of God’s love, branches that truly grow well, connected to each other through the true vine that never lets us down.

“How can a heart given up to human affections be closely united to God? It seems to me that it is impossible. I have seen so many souls, allured by this false light, fly right into it like poor moths, and burn their wings, and then return, wounded, to Our Lord, the Divine fire which burns and does not consume.” – Thérèse de Lisieux