Who Do You See?

I've been reading an excellent book that I highly recommend - Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God. It's a collection of five mini-biographies written by Noel Piper (John's wife). The last bio is of a woman named Helen Roseveare who was a medical missionary to Africa in the middle of last century. Several things stood out to me and convicted me, but I'll just share from one right now.

At one point in her service, Helen was struggling with impatience, irritation, being "overwhelmingly tired" and over-worked. She went to one of her pastors for advice and counsel. Here is an excerpt from Helen's account of the conversation:

Opening his Bible at Galatians 2:20, he drew a straight line in the dirt floor with his heel. "I," he said, "the capital I in our lives, Self, is the great enemy...

"Helen...the trouble with you is that we can see so much Helen that we cannot see Jesus."

...My eyes filled with tears.

..."you should just life your heart to God and pray..." and as he spoke, he moved his heel in the dirt across the I he had previously drawn, "...Please, God, cross out the I."

There in the dirt was his lesson of simplified theology - the Cross - the crossed-out I life..."I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20)

To be crossed out, for the ME part of me to be minimized so that all that is seen is Jesus, that's a scary thing. My pride clings to the idea of myself as an individual, and wants to assert that I'm important! But the Word says to live is Christ.

Obviously this is a bigger thought than I've covered in so brief a post. Perhaps I'll come back to it later. But for right now Brian needs the computer back and it's past my bedtime. So this is something that I'll (hopefully) be thinking about and pondering in the future: does my husband, my son, do my co-workers, the youth, do they see Janelle or Jesus?