The lace panels cascaded gracefully down the length of our two living room windows.  When I was a girl, I went into my living room each afternoon just when the light was the softest to practice the piano.  The clusters of broken, patterned light would be strewn across the floor, bending to creep up on Mama’s old coffee table, meandering up to sit upon the burgundy upholstered Duncan Fife sofa and landing on the crème satin painted walls, spreading with stateliness like fine wallpaper.

I loved gazing on that light. I studied it, traced it with my fingers and tried to anticipate where it would travel as the afternoon ebbed.  It was interesting and delicate, soft and inviting.  I sat at the piano with my back to the light as I practiced, and by the time my thirty minutes had passed, the light that flooded my living room had shifted.  It was no longer tracing the path on the floor, on the coffee table, the sofa and wall.  Now a different pattern of light crept more closely toward the piano, blanketing the stool, illuminating a few keys and leaving swirls and broken fragments of sunshine upon the old walnut cabinet of the piano.

I loved the way the lace panels captured and moved light so much that I had my Mom’s lace curtains in my home for years.  They screened, muted and softened the light, and I loved them.  But, here’s what I wonder–do those lace panels rightly represent light? Do they do the light justice?  Do they show it off like it should be seen?  Do they let the real brilliance of light shine?  I don’t think so. They serve to filter and interpret it.

I fear I have had lace panels over my heart for years. They let in light…light I love to admire…but they filter it. They don’t allow the fullness of Light to shine so I can be in true awe of it.  They shield the glory and grandeur and even fear of Holy Light.

The lace panels that drape my heart are my experiences, paradigms and wishes. The true Light is the fullness of God’s presence and God’s truth as they are–holy and right, comforting and terrifying.

I love to admire God’s truth and presence in my life.  It warms, comforts and captivates me.  But do I only see what my lace curtains have skewed and filtered?  I have veiled my heart with my experiences and expectations.  I invite God to filter through in the way I want Him to look…perhaps not completely how He really is.

I want to do more than simply “admire” the light of God’s presence and God’s Word in my life-I want to be in sheer awe of it. 

I want far more than to be warmed, comforted and captivated by it.  I desperately want to be changed by it.

Because of Christ, we with “unveiled faces” behold the Glory of the Lord, and in doing so, we are being changed” (2 Corinthians 3:18).  What wearing veils of our own experiences and expectations do is change God to fit our liking.  But, when the “veil” is removed by God Himself, we are then changed.

I don’t want to change God to my liking; I want God to change me to His liking.

I want the pure light of God’s truth and presence.  I don’t want my interpretation of it.  Lace curtains are lovely hanging in my childhood memories, but I seek to remove them from my heart so I can experience the true light of God.

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6 NKJV)

Well, that’s what’s been percolating in me lately!

How does the light of Christ shine through you? Leave a comment here.