Chain Reaction

It really isn’t as uncommon as one may think, this still-as-a-glassy-surface-of-a-lake-on-the-outside-but-churning-like-a-magma-chamber within.  

Smiling on the outside, broken within.

Calm on the outside, raging within.

Poised on the outside, ridden with questions and emotions within.

Eventually, the veneer cracks, volcano explodes or we simply get exhausted, get desperately weary of wearing a mask, and the inside seeps out.

The inside belches out and usually we are the ones most surprised of all by what we hear and see.

We are the ones most shocked by the discovery of how woefully little we know and understand ourselves…

This fresh awareness of the discrepancy, even contradiction between the appearance and the substance, the 'inside' and the 'outside' which dawned on me in the linear accelerator room triggered an interesting chain reaction (yes, pun intended!)

By its sharp contrast it reminded me of the words I've been chewing on since Christmas.... the words which suddenly struck me as incredibly radical and insanely rare:

…The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood... 

... Like Father, like Son,

Generous inside and out

True from start to finish.     John 1:14

Not,

Generous on the outside, but kind of stingy within;

Not,

True when he started but turned out false at the end.

With Jesus, it’s what you see is what you get.

Generous through and through. True at the beginning and all the way to the finish line. 

The way he talks, the way he lives in every detail, all the time!

No faking it. No masks.  No need to impress or manipulate. 

No overpromising and under-delivering.

No hidden agendas or ulterior motives. 

No fears and insecurities, and buckling under pressure. 

No packaging falsehood as 'alternate facts'.

Yes is yes and no is no.

How deliciously refreshing!

How delightfully simple!

How absolutely, totally, completely humanly impossible…