Hidden

www.bible.com/1713/psa.119.11.csb

There are things we like to keep concealed, not available for public viewing. Surprisingly, despite the best efforts of social media to extract from us our most closely held secrets, even the people who let it all hang out on the Facebooks the weblogs are still not the same people behind the screens. I think in part it has to do with the way our brains work.

There is a me who is revealed through my personality and my speech and interaction with others. This is generally a me who works to exist alongside others, work with others, and tries to present a genial person to the world. This is the personality I’ve found to work the best in social environments. Then there is a me that is revealed in writing, whose voice tends to be more direct, to the point of an issue, who rushes to get to a point even though there are necessary evidences that ought to be presented along the way. It is my writing brain that perhaps is more revealing of who I am than the person I present otherwise. And so things slip out more easily through my fingers than through my lips.

I think this is why Facebook rants tend to be so vitriolic. Stuff you would never say out loud tends to slip right out with SEND or POST. A “slip of the tongue” is much easier in writing than in face to face conversation. This is what people keep hidden, their hidden sorrows, hidden desires, hidden lusts kept away from the rest of the world, with only brief glimpses through speech they can’t actually “hear” when when they say it.

Let me share this little passage with you:

Brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. A good man produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil man produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
(Mat 12:34-37)

O wicked man that I am. Who will save me from this body of death? Ah, but there is an answer, isn’t there? It’s in the verse that started this monologue from the Psalms. Where is the one place you can hide God’s word that will do the most good? That will transform the heart? That will bring purity to the heart of a man? (Jeremiah 17:9, “the heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable — who can understand it?”) What can cleanse the wickedness of the human heart? The Word of God. The one place where you hide the Word of God is the one place that needs it the most.

How can I hide the word of God in my heart? Read it. Put the word through your eyes into your mind where it will be digested by the heart in thinking about it. Allow yourself to memorize key passages like the ones above to let those verse percolate through your thinking and shape your thoughts. Consider the word and let it shape you, mold you, and transform you, so that “as a man thinks, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)

Lord, help me transform my heart. I know my heart is filthy and needs a good wash. Once you did that for me when I was baptized. You cleansed my heart fully. And now as you once told Peter, he was is is washed is clean, and needs only to wash his feet. Lord I feel my time in this world has soiled my feet again, and I need to bathe in the purity of the Lord Jesus. Lord hear my prayer, help me be pure again before You. In Your holy Name I pray, Amen.