How Could Someone Like Me Get Into Heaven?

I can be such a hypocrite sometimes. The other day I wrote about managing our shame, asking, “What Do We Do With Shame?” I concluded that “we identify with Jesus because He shapes our identity—an identity purchased with His blood, by grace.” But today, I was reading Revelation 21 when my heart sank after reading this passage:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Revelation 21:22-27 (NIV)

The Holy City sounds amazing, but as much as I don’t want to admit it, I still, on occasion, do shameful things, things that no one but God knows about, so I suppose I’m deceitful too—How can someone like me ever enter the Holy City?

Curtains!

Time betwixt time,
darkness reigns
upon mortal
wounds,
while fields of
woe,
flourish still.

What the Pictures Don’t Show

Do you like taking pictures? I love taking pictures. Few things capture a moment better than a picture. Videos can be so much better because they record context. Still, between the two, snapping a picture can be so much more satisfying.

As much as I love taking pictures, I rarely take them. I used to take pictures all the time. In that liminal space between digital photography and smartphones, before smartphones were a thing, my digital camera was seldom far from me. Long before digital cameras, I used different film cameras, and when I moved to France to study, I took my camera and over 25 rolls of film. I even took a panoramic camera.

While I was living in Europe, I bought more film. I took pictures of everything. It was like I had been reborn into a different world. And when I returned to the States six months later, I sent my panoramic film in to be processed, only for it to “disappear” mysteriously. I was heartbroken; every shot had been meticulously taken—I spent 20 minutes alone, on a single shot of Versailles, trying to capture it in just the right light without any people. I could have bought a postcard, but where’s the fun in that?

What Do We Do With Shame?

I was reading Ezekiel when this verse made me pause:

I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign LORD. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, people of Israel!

Ezekiel 36:32 (NIV)

God told Israel they should be ashamed. This is remarkable considering what I’ve experienced around this word, “shame,” and the behaviors associated with it.

I have this dear sister who, if she has even the slightest negative thought or even a perceived negative one about someone, will go up and apologize profusely. She’s come up to me more times than I can remember to apologize for some “offense” I never noticed. If she says something “wrong,” God help her, she behaves as if she slapped you in the face and then laughed about it.

In contrast, I’ve had Christians be rude, condescending, and whatnot to me and others, while never saying a word. They merrily continue on without a care in the world. Between the two behaviors, I probably fall somewhere in between.

It makes me think that we need to learn how to manage our shame.