Shame

I guess there can’t be many people who don’t have things they feel ashamed of. And, if someone says or does something that brings the shame to the surface, we feel a good deal of emotional pain. So, we tend to keep it below the surface – buried. The trouble is, it’s still there – lurking!

Here, David says that he ‘clings to God’s testimonies’. Testimony is what someone, who has witnessed – seen or heard – something, says. God’s testimonies are what God says He’s seen and heard. Which makes ‘clinging’ to them a bit risky. You see, God looks on the heart and His word has a way of exposing what lies hidden there, including the things we feel ashamed of.

A little while ago, Sue said something to me that touched on something about my inner attitudes that I didn’t like. If someone had done something that I thought was stupid or incompetent, I would enjoy telling other people about it. I think it was something I had picked up from other members of my family when I was growing up. And it was still there, deeply embedded. So, when Sue quoted Luke 6:45: ‘the mouth speaks what the heart is full of’, I felt the shamefulness of that attitude and, to be honest, quickly covered it over again.

Was God putting me to shame? No, He was exposing something of which I should be ashamed. Why? Because He wanted to deal with it.

A week or so later, I was sitting quietly during a ‘reflection time’ at an Ellel course, when God showed me something. I was standing near the edge of a cliff. The sea was below me. I was digging into the ground with my fingers, trying to extract a stone that was firmly embedded in the soil. It wasn’t easy. I knew I had to throw it into the sea.
And I knew that it represented the bad attitude that God had exposed. But when I had finally got it out, I became a bit reluctant. After all, the stone could be quite useful – to repair a wall or put in a rockery. Come to that, if it were cleaned up, it might be ornamental. Or, if I needed it, it could be useful missile! But no, I would throw it into the sea – be rid of it. I swung my arm and chucked it as far as I could.

And then, something amazing happened. I expected it just to clear the cliff-edge and drop into the sea – after all, it was quite heavy. But as soon as it had left my hand, it suddenly accelerated away, and I saw the splash as it finally fell into the water, far further than I could ever have got it.

I had to take the initiative to get rid of something that God’s ‘testimony’ had exposed. But once I had done that, He ensured that it was ‘hurled into the depths of the sea’ (Micah 7:19).

Prayer: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24). Amen.