A friend and I talked yesterday, about homes and personalities, places of ministry and selfishness. I'm none too unassuming about my current living situation--I know I hit gold with these girls and I want to spin it for as long as it'll go.
That hasn't always been the case. Sometimes home has been a hard place to come home to, sometimes the person I am when I walk in the door is a person who is seeking shelter from the world's storm, and sometimes the world's storm is behind those doors. Sometimes the weight of what we do here, a covenant people living outside of covenant, is abrasive and sometimes it is the perfect place to hide.
There's something about Jesus that I don't understand and I think the more I live with other people, the more I identify with Him and understand Him less.
Paul said He was a man of no reputation and He said Himself that a prophet has no honor in his hometown and home.
And I think we laud balance and transparency so highly that we fight to adopt that sort of Jesus.
The sort of Jesus who didn't do a miracle in His hometown because they wouldn't believe Him.
The sort that hid when the crowd pressed in.
The sort that asked His disciples to keep quiet about His miracles.
The sort of Jesus who was a man of no reputation.
This rubs against me because I want to be the same person outside these doors that I am inside them. I want to be as extroverted and joy-filled and kind and encouraging within our home, as I try to be without. I want to be consistent. I want to have a good reputation. And I want honor more desperately in these walls than I care about getting it outside of them.
Living with these girls is radically changing me inside. I say to one yesterday that I'm sorry that when I come home I'm quiet, introverted, that she doesn't get the best part of me. She smiled and said, "I like that you're that way at home." I say to one a week ago, "Call me out on my blindspots" and she does. And it hurts.
But here, in this place, where I have no reputation and no honor, I am known.
They know what I look like in the morning and when I haven't had coffee and when I complain about my body or how tired I am or when I rage against the self-checkout at Walmart. They know me best because they know my selfishness, they know my deepest fears and hurts. They've sat in front of me while tears choked me up.
I think Jesus was a man of no reputation because He was known by the only One who mattered.
And He had no honor in His hometown because He knew His real home wasn't here on earth.
I think Jesus was saying that here, on earth, we're going to feel the abrasiveness of living and the inconsistency of life, but that's okay.We 're not really home yet anyway.