I am not the man you think I am.

(Image courtesy of http://www.scotiana.com.)

Will you descend with me into my soul?  But beware! for it is not pretty, yet it is my home.  In my heart lies a world of darkness shrouded in nauseating mist.  Follow me closely, lest you fall off a cliff.

Begin your descent with me down a road covered with broken bones of those innocently slaughtered.  Rotting and chipped, they litter the landscape – bones of those I have murdered in my overwhelming hate.  Be careful!  Watch your step!  When irritation leads to fury, I commence my killing, blinded with writhing wrath, never stopping to see my aftermath.

Bitterness and rage – they fall upon me too often.  For this reason, I am not the man you think I am.

Travel further into my heart, down the road of death and destruction, and find hatred boiling, bubbling on this hearth off the path.  Taste it and find that it is as fire – engulfing, empowering, and destroying all who touch it to their lips.  But to mine I have raised it one too many times.  It burns my throat, makes my nostrils sting, yet it gives life to my body, excitement and endurance – but for how long?

Abhorrence and animosity – they crush me under their weight.  Love?  What is that?  I am not the man you think I am.

As we continue deeper into the dark, in a state of disbelief and disappointment, I stumble and fall walking down this road of sorrow and self-pity.  (Please watch that you don’t trip as I did!)  Woe is me!  All I do ends up in embarrassing failure.  I cannot live up to the demands.  Let me wallow and waste away in my misery and turmoil!  Blind my eyes – gouge them out! – so that I do not have to see the landscape of calamitous catastrophe surrounding me.

Selfish absorbance is my misery – the pain soothes me, yet suffocates me.  Such is my life.  I am not the man you think I am.

Come further in still and you will find a dark, barren land of (ironically) illustrious beauty.  Seclusion and seduction can be found in every crevice.  The lustful lairs that I have constructed are foreboding and gray.  Each one – and they are many – offer me rest for a bit, but for a high price.  For the guardians of each lair keep dragging me back.  Not having the strength to fight against the fleshly desires, I give in more each day.   See these chains on my hands and my feet?  I am hooked, made a slave to their doors.

Sensual seduction, the meat of my heart – I can never gorge myself on it enough.  I am not the man you think I am.

And while this world in the valley I call home is dark and full of selfishness, there lies something still higher over those far away hills that is calling.  I try to ignore it, push it away, fill up my ears with noise, flee from its gaze – yet I cannot escape it.  For this I find I am surprisingly glad.  You, too, I am sure, know what I mean and have seen what I see.  On that mountain peak far away stands a Man clothed in white.  Behind Him is a door engulfed in a great light.  He beckons me and urges me, quiet yet firm.  “Follow me,” He gently says. “I thought by now you might have learned: this life that you live leads only to destruction.  Come with Me and I will give you truth and instruction.”

On that precipice far away, I still see Him waving, calling, pleading.  Yet here I stand in the darkness, other things desperately clawing me back.  I stand in the middle, on a hill overlooking the darkened valley of death below constituting my life, looking up toward the Man on the brightly-lit mountain’s great peak, dreading the climb, yet not wanting to turn back in defeat.

Lord, I am not the man You think I am.

“I know exactly who you are, and I have called you by name; I will make you the man I want you to be.  Now, come!  I didn’t ask.  Here; give Me your burdens.  Now turn and follow me….”


"For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:30).
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!" (Romans 10:13).

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