When
we are ready to accept the grace God and others have for us, our secrets become
like broken kindling which help build warming fires of joy and comfort for us
and those around us. Isolation becomes joyful fellowship. It is replaced with
relational assurance and confidence. Not like the temporary, intoxicating feelings
our addictions gave us, but a deep, profound sense of goodness, openness and
oneness with God and the world He created. When we say goodbye to our secrets,
we become honest and free men. We grow to become more like Jesus.
We hide what we
know or feel ourselves to be (which we assume to be unacceptable and unlovable)
behind some kind of appearance which we hope will be more pleasing. We hide
behind pretty faces which we put on for the benefit of our public. And in time
we may even come to forget that we are hiding, and think that our assumed
pretty faces is what we really look like.
Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian
Traditions
This is an excerpt from When Lost Men Come Home, not for men only copyright, david zailer 2012

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