I was ten years old the first time I remember anyone calling me “ugly.”  It was Sunday night, just after services had let out, sometime during the school year.  We all stood in pools of manmade light around the little rock church building, the adults talking and laughing together, the children scampering about in the front yard of the lot, usually girls together and boys together, except for the teenagers who stood together in a group off to one side, aloof from it all.  I didn’t do much running because of my vision, so it was easy for a boy to sneak up behind me, pull my hair and say that awful word.

 No, he did not have a crush on me.  That’s what they always told girls like me, that and the ugly duckling story.  I was overweight with a head full of frizzy hair, and big coke bottle glasses that made me look bug-eyed and a little stupid.  When he said it, he meant it.

 Despite my precarious vision, I fled around the side of the building into the blackness of the back yard—no lights to see here, either ugly me or my ugly tears.  I would never have gone back there for any other reason—it was far too scary and I tripped over things right in front of me even in broad daylight, but that dark, shadowy place was where I thought I belonged, because I had seen myself in the mirror and I believed him.  I had also heard several adults talk about my “ugly glasses,” and what a shame it was I had to wear them.  What they didn’t realize was since I could not see at all without them (a +17.5 prescription), they were as much a part of me as my nose or any other part of my face.  They were my eyes, and if they were ugly, so was I.

 Child psychology has come a long way.  We know that children believe what others say about them.  If you tell a child he is bad, he will live up to it.  And if you tell a little girl she is ugly, it will take her decades to get over it.

 So why do we do this thing to ourselves?  Why do we go on and on about being “only human,” as if being made in the image of God were a bad thing?  Why do we constantly tell one another we are “not perfect?”  Why do we introduce ourselves as “sinners?”  Okay, maybe it is a humility thing, but I see too many times when it is something else entirely—it’s an excuse for not doing better.  And the more often we give ourselves those excuses, the more often we will need them.

 Listen instead to the Word of God:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, Rom 8:16.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…Eph 2:10.

And, having been set free from sin, [you] have become servants of righteousness, Rom 6:18.

…But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God, 1 Cor 6:11.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, 1 Pet 2:9.

 That’s what you are—God’s work, God’s children, chosen, royal, holy, righteous, sanctified.  Tell yourself that every morning. Look in the mirror and say the words aloud.  We are “called saints” right along with those Corinthian brethren, 1 Cor 1:2.  Stop calling yourself a sinner all the time.  If that is what you believe, that is what you will do, and then find yourself running back into the darkness trying to hide from it all.

 Turn on the light and call yourself by the names God does.  This is an “Ugly Duckling” story that has really come true.  You are His child, and that makes you beautiful.  Now live that way.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure, 1 John 3:1,2.

Dene Ward

We moved my mother move so she would be near us the last few years of her life.  She has accumulated a lot in 87 years.  Even though she gave away at least half of her kitchen equipment and several pieces of furniture, as the movers traipsed in and out and the little house begin to fill, we no longer said, “In the living room,” or “In the back bedroom.”  By the end we were telling them, “Just find an empty corner and put it there.”  True, the house is 100 square feet less than the one she left, but that’s only a 10 x 10 room, perhaps one very small bedroom, and there seems to be many more times that much furniture we have yet to find a place for.  It appears that she will need to give away even more.

 I found myself thinking what I might give up when we need to leave this place we have lived for 33 years now.  Relatively small as family homes go, just 1330 square feet, we still managed to raise two boys to manhood and have accumulated far more than will fit in a house the size of my mother’s new one.  So what can I do without?

 The answer is really simple.  You can do without practically every possession you have.  Just look at what we take camping.  It’s a lot to take for a vacation, but for living, it’s practically nothing and we manage just fine for well over a week. 

 But maybe the answer is even easier than that.  What will you take in the moving van when you die?  Absolutely nothing.  It will be empty from front to rear, top to bottom.  Absolute essentials for this physical life may be the smallest and plainest amounts of food, clothing, and shelter, but for your spiritual life, all those things that you spend so much time picking out, caring for, and working to pay for are completely nonessential 

 So why do we spend so much time and energy on them?  Why do we care so much where we live and how it is decorated, what we wear and who designed it, what we eat and how good it tastes?  Could it be because we have forgotten this fundamental truth:  things of this life—possessions, status, wealth, connections—none of it matters to the wise child of God. 

Do they matter to you?  If you could not give them up, they matter more than you probably want to admit.  And if losing them would turn you into an emotional wreck, your priorities need a serious overhaul.

Today, think about that moving van on the day of your death.  It doesn’t really matter what you might like to put in it.  Your soul is going somewhere, but it won’t move an inch.

Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. ​For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him,Ps 49:16-17.

Dene Ward

A follow-up to Monday's post on imputation:

What the gospel, therefore, cannot mean is this: When God comes to judge the world, God will treat you as righteous when you are not; you’re saved from being judged on that day no matter what you do, how you live, for whom you live; Jesus’ righteousness is enough to get you off the hook with God; God expects nothing of you. If we think this is what Paul’s gospel means for us, we have to be prepared to say that God does show partiality. God will judge his Son’s friends according to one set of standards and everyone else by another set of standards—and he will declare innocent those in the first group who would fail the test if they belonged to the second group. 

(D.A. deSilva, Transformation, 19, emphasis in original).