These last three or four months have been a journey for me. A journey in which I was walking blinded by the creations of man. I was alive without actually living. I was dying, without actually dying. I suppose I was stuck in a form of limbo. I was not aware of the infectious manifestations of idols that I had permitted to guide my life. I was in a coma, without really being in a coma. A part of my body and mind was aware of the disease I had allowed to dwell within my soul and I was watching as my life was slowly decomposed into the roots of history. I had permitted my ethics and morals to crumble into the ground such as an old archaic structure would with time. I was ‘living’ simply to exist, to survive, and nothing more. It was not until the end of January and the beginning of February that I began to see myself from an ‘out of body’ point of view. I was walking down a path with an unstructured future and I finally had enough of it.
I made the decision of becoming more pure. Pure, in such a way that my mind would be clear and empty. I decided to rid myself of the things that polluted my mind; things such as video games, movies, music, facebook, were just a couple of pollutents that I wanted to dispose of. I recently stumbled across the story of Balaam’s Donkey. A story some of you, if interested, can find in the book of Numbers 22:21-38. It’s an interesting little story, unique in its own special way. This event revolves around Balaam, a man called upon by Balak to curse the people of Israel in return he would receive a great amount of wealth. The reason behind Balak’s action to call Balaam was caused by fear; because he was afraid of the growing strength of the Israelites he decided he wanted to place a curse upon that nation, but I will leave that out of my discussion for tonight. What I want to revolve my thoughts tonight is around Balaam’s Journey while arriving to Balak. His story reveals the deception of trying to maintain an outward appearance of spirituality over a corrupt hidden life.
Now that last sentence is what I want to focus on tonight. It is what I want to reflect on through my Blog today. I want to focus on the deception of trying to maintain an outward appearance of spirituality over a corrupt hidden life. How can that apply to my life? How can it apply to yours? Well, to begin with I have felt like I have been trying to manage this “appearance” of my Christianity to people, when my heart knows I have been living a lie. How can this apply to you? Well, whether you believe in God or not I am sure most of you can relate to efforts spent on keeping up an appearances to cover up our real selves. Some of us have put on masks at one point in our lifes to simply try and survive through this life. However, at one point in our life who and what we are will somehow come to the surface that will destroy those masks, and quite possibly destroy us.
In the story of Balaam’s Donkey we have our main character, Balaam, going off on a journey to meet with Balak. During three instances of his Journey, the donkey on which Balaam was riding on headed in a different direction than intended to. Now, our little friend here did not understand why this was happening, such events slightly angered and annoyed him. Now I’m sure there are times when things in life don’t go as the way we had planned them to go, such instances result in us getting frustruated and angry. In my past, this was a great weakness of mine. I had dreams, I had plans, I had goals…Yet there were times where I felt like I was being pulled into a different direction. I was young and naive, my eyes had not been fully opened to see the direction had wanted me to walk towards to, so such emotions/reactions were expected. There are times where we become blinded by the desire for money, fame, or possessions. We allowed such things to manipulate our emotions. These objects had control of our lifes to the point where we let them control who and what we were. We let the clothes we wore define the type of person we were. We let the music we listened to define us as a musician. We would let other personal possesions or desire define us as people. Now, as I am typing this I am saying “we”, yet I am speaking for myself. I had let these things control me and define me. I had placed these masks over myself and had put much effort into keeping up an apperance as oppsed to finding an answer to the sin in my life. In Balaam’s case, it was the desire for money that drove him to Balak, it was his greed for wealth.
What are the consequences in living a life behind masks? Well, growing up as a teenager I would act harshly against family by trying to correct who I really was. With time the problem eased, yet it did not mean it was fully gone. Now, in present time, such actions have led me by striking out at blamelss people who have simply tried to correct my ways. It was my pride that was embarassed that caused such actions. After readion Balaam’s Story I had realized that lashing out at others was simply a sign that there was something wrong with me. I had hurt loved ones by trying to head in the direction I wanted to go as opposed to the direction God wanted me to go. Some of you have lost those closest to your heart by letting your pride take over. What I ask of you that have not encountered such instances is to not let your own hurt pride lead to the hurt of others. We can avoid such incidents by facing ourselves and realizing that we are accepted and forgiven, knowing that we have the chance to start over from within should encourage those with lives lost or misled to start over.
If there is anyone that reads this whom I have hurt or lashed out due to my pride being hurt, I ask you to forgive me. I thank you for your guidance and ask for you to give me another chance. If it is time you need than you have all the time of the world. Just know that I truly regret the things of my past.
Now with my main point being spread across through words I must say that these past couple of weeks have been life changing for me. I have let go of many materialistic objects in my life that once held me back. Items such as video games and movies are now gone. Traded or sold for less than what they are worth. I continue to go through each day giving/selling/donating such items. You want to know the best part of it all? I am happy. It feels great knowing that I have been freed by such things. They no longer cover the person I really am through masks. I can now face the world by the person I truly am and not by the person they want me to be.
I can only pray that you find it in your hearts to accept me, just as I accept each and every one of you.
With all that being said and done, I wish you all a good night.
