Instruction
Evaluation of this devotional is graded on a participation only basis. To receive points for the unit devotional, you must write one original post (at least 10 sentences) in response to your instructor’s prompt. Content of the posting is not graded.
Betty Skinner was a dedicated Christian wife and mother who was hospitalized with clinical depression the 1960s, before modern therapies were available. As a result, Betty had to find her way to wholeness through determination and utter dependence on God. Her story is captured by Crenshaw & Snapp (2006) in The Hidden Life: Revelations from a holy journey. Betty’s was a frustrating and often lonely journey, but over time, God redeemed her dark, broken places and crafted a life that continues to shine as a beacon of hope (from back cover). Below is an excerpt from the book:
For most of my life, I have been a seeker, searching and longing to live from a deeper place. On a rainy day many years ago, I stood silently and gazed at the mist that had crept in and covered the inside of my window so completely that I could barely see outside. As I contemplated the patterns the fog created, several tiny droplets came together and formed a single drop of condensation that slowly made its way down the pane of glass, clearing the mist from a narrow strip on the window and allowing me to see with clarity the astonishing beauty of my rain-refreshed backyard.
As I look back on my life’s journey—and retrospect is such a beautiful view—I have learned that, just as the mist of our uncertainty coalesces and then opens us to glimpses of brilliant hope and vision, so, too, our times of darkness and pain reveal and illuminate the mystery and beauty of our true self hidden within….I have been through the dark and lonely places. I know the suffering and the pain of this inner journey, but I also have come to know the One who continues to lead me through it. As we choose to embrace the joys and the sorrows of each necessary season in faith and trust, the fog shrouding our soul slowly lifts and we behold, as in a glass, His glory and our glory in Him. Gradually then, we begin to mirror this eternal light of Love, claiming our true nature (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). After almost eighty years, I still can’t explain it, but I tell you that it is so because I have experienced it.
Jesus is not primarily a teacher of information or morals. His teachings go much deeper than that. He is a teacher of a way or a path that leads to change and transformation and a new heart brought about by a surrendered life deeply centered in God. Jesus challenges us to abandon the wide, easy path of conventional wisdom and embark on the long, difficult, and narrow path of divine wisdom that leads those of us who choose to follow away from temporal values centered in ourselves toward eternal values centered in God. He is always lovingly and compassionately inviting His followers to a different way of seeing and living (pp. 22-23).
We all, with unveiled faces, are reflecting the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:18)