[Image Description: A picture of a quilt with an impressionistic image on it.
White on the bottom half gives the impression of snowfall. Black on the top half gives the impression of a dark forrest.
White and black vertical streaks give the impression of birch trees. A cardinal sits halfway up a tree just right of the center of the image.]
God,
what do i do with this body you gave me? what do i do with this skin you put on me?
what do i do with the ways people perceive my skin, the ways my skin marks me as the rightful winner in a story they don't even know they believe? what do i about the fact that others have skin that marks them as intruders into the narrative of my greatness?
what do i do if i know this story isn't true?
how do i live against a story that says i'm the hero without living into one that says i'm a villain? is it enough to steal from the rich to feed the poor, or is that just the creation of a new story in which I am still the hero? is the problem not that some don't have, but that "having" is given any kind of merit?
should i seek to change the story, or tell a different story altogether?
does my place in their stories even matter?
i'd like to think that i'm working towards a world in which my skin doesn't mark me as any character in any story other than one who is dead coming to life and one who is lost coming home, always coming home, in a death that promises resurrection, because that's how the Story goes.
for that is the story, Your blood in place of mine, Your skin instead of mine.
unless it's not. unless it's Your blood, so mine too. Your skin, so mine too.
Your blood and skin and sacrifice are perfect, but mine are shaky copycats, a child playfully acting out the greatest Story ever told, the play a testament to the story's Truth, the play somehow making it True, the Story instructing and instructed by my stumbling missteps as i stagger into understanding, into a death that promises resurrection, because that's how the Story goes.
but until then we have our skins and our perceptions, our falsehoods and our stones, our structures we thought could be home but only leave us looking up like they did at Babel wondering what it would take to reach higher, what good and evil we could know or life we could deny to bring us closer to godlike height in the heavens, not knowing that life is found in our fully human bodies entering into God-fearing love on the ground.
so with Your skin and our skin, Your sacrifice and our sacrifices, Your ultimate death and our little deaths, we find the hidden Kingdom brick by brick, seed by seed, hope by hope, this Tree of Life growing until the structures must fall before it, fall before You in worship, fall into a death that promises resurrection, because that's how the Story goes.
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