Naked before God

I knew a man who had the privilege of meeting Richard Branson. He had a great idea and Branson was interested. A helicopter took him to Branson’s island, where he disembarked with a studied look, his laptop on his arm and determination in his heart.

He was led to a room where Branson sat in a large Turkish bath, sans any clothes. My friend was taken aback, but Branson was unmoved. Clearly the laptop would never do in the bath and yet it was clear that no meeting would happen unless they both shared the bath, to “break bread” as it were. So my friend took the plunge, stripped off and joined Branson in the bath. Then they talked man to man about his idea.

Branson cared little about the technical brilliance of his presentation, but did want to see if they could be real and open. I suppose he felt that if my friend could not be vulnerable it was not worth doing business with him.

How often do we approach God’s throne with our own pretensions and assumptions. We expect Him to receive us on the basis of our credentials, references, religion, commitments, works, achievements, connections, knowledge or whatever. And we expect Him to receive us in spite of all He did for us. He accepts us, make no mistake, but not on our pretences. As long as we approach Him by any other way, we will never connect.

Our righteousness is filthy rags before Him. But here is another more salient issue – the effort it takes to keep up our pretences and our contrivances is the real weight that weighs down every soul. It hampers us and is the most exploitable lever in our lives.

Theologically, one wonders whether Adam and Eve were rejected because of their sin, or because of their shame. Whatever, I do know that what keeps us from God is not our sin – the cross resolved that. We may perceive that God rejects us, because we cannot forgive ourselves or cast off our fig leaves. We may feel naked without our fig leaves, even if they have the bulky weight and associated debt burdens of a car, a house, symbols, assets and qualifications that are redundant by the time we leave college.

If you want a truly cathartic experience, allow God to lead you a place where you can stand freely naked before Him (metaphorically or literally naked). Don’t be weird, there is enough weirdness is this world and it is often as pretentious as what less weird people use to cover their nakedness. Don’t be arrogant, that would present you as vulgar to God, one boasting in the flesh – there is enough of that too. But allow God to humble you to a true heart-to-heart connectedness, where you reduce yourself to what you really are – absolutely nothing. Then let Him clothe you in His garments of praise and righteousness.

If you let Him lead you into it, you will discover a lightness of being that is probably very close to the light linen that we will wear in heaven. It is so light it leaves us feeling naked, yet it is so adequate we will never again be vulnerable in His presence or in the presence of others, nor will we go cold into the night.

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net