I was going to post this picture on my profile. It is a picture I like but does not seem to be me.
I always thought that it could not be me, but I know that it is. It is a glamor picture. It takes two hours of make up time, and style time for my hair, and of course a professional photographer. I know it is me and maybe you might call it me, but the real me is the one inside. The real me is the one that the Holy Spirit is working on. It takes a lot longer than two hours for the makeover inside because I am the one giving the Holy Spirit permission to change me. I need changes because the real me has an old pattern that is tattered and torn.
So, I am trying to let go of my old ways, and learning to be transformed into image of Christ Jesus. Letting go is the important part, asking forgiveness for trying to make myself into the the person I think I should be, and actually allowing the Holy Spirit to make me into the image that He sees-the one that will please my Father. I wonder what I will look like from heaven's point of view.

His Scars

I have studied His Back for quite a few months. I've thought about His Pain and the goal that was set before Him as He did the Father's will and suffered at the Cross. He chose to exchange His Life for ours. Are we continuing to wound Him by our choices, by our words?
He hears all we say about Him when we call out His Name. He knows our every secret sin, and even every thought. He knows our weakness, and our strengths, and what we do with them. He took our place for the punishment we deserved.

Before the Israelites entered the "Promised Land", Moses requested to see G-d and His Glory.
He was shown G-d's backside. Could this be what Moses saw? All G-d's Glory passed before him as the LORD covered Moses with His hand over the cleft in the Rock. And G-d declared " The LORD, the LORD, a G-d compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity, transgressions and sin."His mercy and justice is still flowing toward us. He is a good G-d. The Glory of the LORD is still shining out from His Scars.

His Scars that were made by His brothers. G-d forgive us. We wound each other by our words and competitve actions. We push and shove each other to claim position at His right or left.

"Who can believe what we have heard?
Upon whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he has grown, by His favor, like a tree crown,
Like a tree trunk out of arid ground.
He had no form or beauty, that we should look at him:
No charm, that we should find him pleasing.
He was despised, shunned by men,
A man of suffering, familiar with disease.
As one who hid his face from us,
He was despised, we held him of no account.
Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing,
Our suffering that he endured.
We accounted him plagued,
Smittenand afflicted of G-d;
But he was wounded because of our sin,
Crushed because of our iniquities.
He bore the chastisement that made us whole,
And by his bruises we were healed.
We all went astray like sheep,
Each going his own way;
And the LORD visited upon him
The guilt of all of us." (Isaiah 53: 1-6.)