The Light Waits Under Your Shame

The afternoon sun is unforgiving; it shines on the dust motes dancing in the air and the cracks in the pavement you try to avoid. It is the hour of performance, where you smile at coworkers while terrified they might glimpse the stain you carry beneath your skin.

You brace for the recoil. You wait for the disgust.

But there is a voice that speaks into this middle-of-the-day fear, a voice that says: go home to your people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you. Not how clean you are.

Not how perfect you look. Tell them what was done.

The light does not require you to scrub the stain before you are loved. It asks only that you bring the truth of your story into the room.

Split a piece of wood, and the light is there. Lift up the stone of your shame, and you will find it waiting underneath.

The thing you are hiding is the very place where the light has already made its home. You are not a secret waiting to be exposed.

You are a vessel already filled.