Michelle L. Cramer

You know how, when a home is empty or not cared for on a regular basis, the furniture gets covered with sheets to keep the dust and dirt from settling on it and tarnishing it?

Maybe you’re doing that to your heart. You feel that it’s been unattended for some time. You fear the things going on around you. The unknown that lies ahead. And you don’t want to be vulnerable. So you hide. You cover yourself in your own protective drapery so the dust doesn’t settle on you.

You’re stagnant, stationary in your life and walk with the Lord. So you duck and cover, accepting this place of limited usefulness. Hoping something comes along that will uncover you, pulling you, forcing you out of hiding. But, until then, you’ll just sit… like an unused sofa.

But God has not called us to give up. He’s not called us to a place of stagnation and complacency. And he doesn’t want you to hide, covering yourself in a dust guard.

Instead, He’s calling us to cover ourselves in His Holy Spirit. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, to willingly say “Here I am, Lord. May I be a vessel used for your glory.” Not putting up walls, putting on a dust guard. Because in truth, the dust and dirt of hardship will still settle on us – hiding will not change that. It’s the lack of movement that will only allow more difficulty to settle.

The Holy Spirit is, instead, a repellent. Remaining open to the Lord’s movement and usefulness in our lives keeps us from stagnation and suffocation under our dependency upon self-protection. And the dust can’t settle when you’re moving.

I’d rather be like a sofa a little worn from usefulness than like one hidden, musty and dormant. I don’t want to repress the movement of the Holy Spirit in my life, or the lives of others through me. I don’t want to be lifeless because of hesitation, but to open myself up to what the Lord has so that I will find joy, even in hardship, because that means my life is full.