No wax here

I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head, its hard to pull out any that make a coherent paragraph. But I'll give it a valiant effort.

A couple days ago, a dear friend gave me a verse as encouragement for my trip. It's Psalm 37:23-24, which in NLT says, "The steps of the godly are directed by the LORD. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will not fall, for the LORD holds them by the hand." In NIV, it says that "the LORD makes his steps firm."

Today in church, we sang a song that began "Everything You hold in Your hand, yet You make time for me; I can't understand."

Those two thoughts sum up what I've been mulling over the most - the amazing mystery that God is all-powerful, King of Kings, the Great "I Am" . . . and also the God Who Sees Me.

As I am preparing to leave, I've found that I have less to actually DO than I thought. I ran some errands last week, and I've been gathering things up from around the house that I want to take with me. They've made nice little piles on my dresser :) However, today the Holy Spirit impressed upon me that I need to pay attention to preparing my heart just as much as I am preparing my luggage.

When I thought about what I wanted most to be prepared for, I realized that my deepest prayer right now is that I would be genuine. I want to be transparent and real to the people that I meet in London. I don't want to miss amazing opportunities to see God's glory because I covered His light in me.

This reminded me of a sunday school lesson that I learned many, many years ago. In Philippians 1:10, Paul exhorts us to "be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ." The word sincere literally means "without wax" in greek. It came from the pottery trade; cheap or unethical potters would sell cracked pottery by plugging up the holes and cracks with wax. You could not tell the difference by just looking at the pottery - it looked as whole as a true piece. However, if you held the piece of pottery up to the sun and let the light shine through, you could see the wax glow and know that it was broken and would not actually hold up to much stress.

Many of you have asked how you can pray for me - and I ask most of all that you pray I will be genuine and sincere, without wax. I want to be the real thing, for my actions and attitudes to be so in sync with what I say I believe, that words are superfluous. One of my favorite quotes attributed to St. Francis of Assisi is, "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words."