Are you wearing a mask?

On this coming Tuesday people everywhere will be wearing masks, I personally think it isn’t that different from any other day of the year! How many people are you really honest with about everything? Every day we get up for work, school, any other activity we have planned, and get ready by taking a shower, using products to sanitize, smell and look good, then we do it, men and women alike put on our person mask. There have been times I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled to see if I could make it look believable then put on another coat of mascara and out I go. People ask how you are and you smile and say, “Just fine, thank you, how are you?” They don’t care how you are and what’s more you couldn’t care less how they are, but you ask. That is a mask. We hide behind all kinds of masks, there are Christian ones, work, play and good sport masks then we play the part. Some even go to God and try wearing that mask, but He doesn’t buy it for one moment. Adam and Eve tried to hide behind trees when God called them by name, but He already knew they had sinned. Elijah tried to hide behind a mask that was at the same time pious and pitiful, trying to make God honor him as the only surviving believer and feel sorry for him being alone, and being chased by a woman. This man who had called down fire from heaven was running, scared for his life. There are people around you everyday that feel the only way they can function is to hide who they are from the whole world. When we find out that the happy person we thought we knew really has a deep problem they have been hiding it’s a paradigm shift, your thinking has to rearrange. But whose problem is that? Is it yours or theirs? I know a person who in reality is very shy almost to the point of being anti-social, but if you put them on a stage with a part to play you would think they were to most outgoing, comfortable with themself person you would ever know. I actually gave thought today about how many people I could just be “me” with. Being raised as a “preacher’s kid” I always had to be agreeable, and sometimes I just didn’t feel it. I remember when I was four that my parents stopped at a house to give a ride to a lady and her little girl to church. I was standing in the back seat with my chin on my hands on the back of the front seat and when I saw them coming down the walk, I reached over and locked the door, I can still remember thinking that if the door were locked, they couldn’t get in and we could just go on to church without them! My parents couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get in and I was just standing there ignoring their knocks on the window. You can guess that I was soundly spanked for this little display! I am here to say I have let my mask drop and decided that if you don’t like me the way I am, then you just don’t like me. What mask are you wearing, and wouldn’t you be more comfortable with the air on your face rather than hiding all the time? Quit hiding, your friends will still love you and if they don’t they were never your friend at all. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says it all: “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.” Do you identify?