The Woman in the Iron Mask
Life can sometimes throw a curve ball that takes us by surprise. You can set all your bills to auto-pay, make sure you meet your quotas at work, hire a maid, plan your kids lunches to a T, and set the alarm clock twenty minutes faster…but there’s no escaping some of the hardships in this life.
It can be like losing your footing on the mountain ledge; as you dangle there in the wide empty space between the heavens above and the jagged earth below, you begin wondering how you might have stepped differently. Then reality sets in and you just start yelling for help! Who cares what went wrong, just get me out of here!
My hope today, however, resides in the Lord. King David said, “When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.”
This morning, after receiving tough news the past few weeks and enduring another blow yesterday, I began the day with little idea what I could write about that would encourage another soul—let alone my own.
I have found a measure of comfort in toting around my old Bible that I had as a youth during these tough times. The pages are torn and tattered. In fact, there are even tire tracks where it fell from my car hood fifteen years ago and a friend ran over it before I could jump out and rescue it!
While that was indeed a disappointment then, it’s a memory now. I always had my Bible with me: at school, at my little part-time job where I helped repair shoes, at church, and even when I went hiking in the mountains. It was there.
The pages are crumpled, some of them not even attached to the spine any longer. They are covered in ink from various readings; bold stripes of yellow, pink, and blue sometimes cover entire pages while hurried little scrawled notes fill the margins. Believe it or not, such proofs of heavenly conversation even line the pages of ‘begats’ that we often skip over!
My Old Friend to the Rescue
In my distress this particular morning, I couldn’t even think where I should read. I needed something but I just didn’t know what to do…so I decided to “encourage myself in the Lord.”I’ve often heard ministers prescribe this tactic when you are discouraged. How to do it? They often suggest that you should remember the goodness of God…and you should. They say you should call to memory the sermons you’ve heard …and you should. They refer you to devotionals like these so you can read and be encouraged …and you should.
But you see, having such a history of reading, highlighting, and note-taking in my favorite old Bible, I can glean from my former discoveries and experiences catalogued there. In a way, the former me—an earlier self—is able to minister to my current situation as I flip through random pages, reading margins and noting the passages marked in neon shades of highlighter, pen, and even colored pencil. As a youth, I used whatever was handy!
It is in times like this that I’m so thankful for my hunger for the Word of God as a child; who could imagine that a thirty-year-old woman could be retaught and strengthened by a twelve-year-old who once wrote into the margins of her Bible.
Some people prefer not to mar the pages of the text, but those scribblings have long served me as reminders of spiritual discoveries and landmarks along the way.
So, Today’s Message is from a Twelve Year Old
Although it might not be the best presentation of the material, I’d like to share with you the process by which I arrived at our lesson today.
You see, after learning that more layoffs are imminent in my industry and, almost simultaneously, finding out that my grandfather has returned to the hospital, I felt my inspiration was completely used up. What could I say to others in need? Actually…what could I even say to myself as I drove back to the hospital we’ve been haunting for over a month now?
Arriving in the parking lot, I could feel the tears brimming over my eyelids, threatening to spill in a cascade down my face. The gray and turquoise suit I had adorned to embolden me for the day at work seemed to blur as I looked at my lap. I just couldn’t walk into that room in this condition.
As a minister’s wife, you often have to adorn a façade. You must be the encouraging voice, the upbeat one in the situation with unwaivering faith.
The Woman in the Iron Mask
It almost seems comical to me right now. I have always been a history buff from the time I was about seven, reading my grandfather’s books on World War I and II. I was reading the other night about the man in the iron mask; the mask, it seems, was not to be removed on pain of death. The man, who is said to have had upper class tastes and hobbies, lived forty-one years of his life covered by an iron and sometimes velvet mask, forbidden to speak to anyone.
It was astounding to me that a man could live for forty-one years without expressing his soul to another living person; I couldn’t fathom hiding my face and my identity for so long that I died in anonymity, a mystery for future generations to ponder.
It can be like losing your footing on the mountain ledge; as you dangle there in the wide empty space between the heavens above and the jagged earth below, you begin wondering how you might have stepped differently. Then reality sets in and you just start yelling for help! Who cares what went wrong, just get me out of here!
My hope today, however, resides in the Lord. King David said, “When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.”
This morning, after receiving tough news the past few weeks and enduring another blow yesterday, I began the day with little idea what I could write about that would encourage another soul—let alone my own.
I have found a measure of comfort in toting around my old Bible that I had as a youth during these tough times. The pages are torn and tattered. In fact, there are even tire tracks where it fell from my car hood fifteen years ago and a friend ran over it before I could jump out and rescue it!
While that was indeed a disappointment then, it’s a memory now. I always had my Bible with me: at school, at my little part-time job where I helped repair shoes, at church, and even when I went hiking in the mountains. It was there.
The pages are crumpled, some of them not even attached to the spine any longer. They are covered in ink from various readings; bold stripes of yellow, pink, and blue sometimes cover entire pages while hurried little scrawled notes fill the margins. Believe it or not, such proofs of heavenly conversation even line the pages of ‘begats’ that we often skip over!
My Old Friend to the Rescue
In my distress this particular morning, I couldn’t even think where I should read. I needed something but I just didn’t know what to do…so I decided to “encourage myself in the Lord.”I’ve often heard ministers prescribe this tactic when you are discouraged. How to do it? They often suggest that you should remember the goodness of God…and you should. They say you should call to memory the sermons you’ve heard …and you should. They refer you to devotionals like these so you can read and be encouraged …and you should.
But you see, having such a history of reading, highlighting, and note-taking in my favorite old Bible, I can glean from my former discoveries and experiences catalogued there. In a way, the former me—an earlier self—is able to minister to my current situation as I flip through random pages, reading margins and noting the passages marked in neon shades of highlighter, pen, and even colored pencil. As a youth, I used whatever was handy!
It is in times like this that I’m so thankful for my hunger for the Word of God as a child; who could imagine that a thirty-year-old woman could be retaught and strengthened by a twelve-year-old who once wrote into the margins of her Bible.
Some people prefer not to mar the pages of the text, but those scribblings have long served me as reminders of spiritual discoveries and landmarks along the way.
So, Today’s Message is from a Twelve Year Old
Although it might not be the best presentation of the material, I’d like to share with you the process by which I arrived at our lesson today.
You see, after learning that more layoffs are imminent in my industry and, almost simultaneously, finding out that my grandfather has returned to the hospital, I felt my inspiration was completely used up. What could I say to others in need? Actually…what could I even say to myself as I drove back to the hospital we’ve been haunting for over a month now?
Arriving in the parking lot, I could feel the tears brimming over my eyelids, threatening to spill in a cascade down my face. The gray and turquoise suit I had adorned to embolden me for the day at work seemed to blur as I looked at my lap. I just couldn’t walk into that room in this condition.
As a minister’s wife, you often have to adorn a façade. You must be the encouraging voice, the upbeat one in the situation with unwaivering faith.
The Woman in the Iron Mask
It almost seems comical to me right now. I have always been a history buff from the time I was about seven, reading my grandfather’s books on World War I and II. I was reading the other night about the man in the iron mask; the mask, it seems, was not to be removed on pain of death. The man, who is said to have had upper class tastes and hobbies, lived forty-one years of his life covered by an iron and sometimes velvet mask, forbidden to speak to anyone.
It was astounding to me that a man could live for forty-one years without expressing his soul to another living person; I couldn’t fathom hiding my face and my identity for so long that I died in anonymity, a mystery for future generations to ponder.
In ministry, however, often we wear a similar mask. No, our nose, our lips, even our smile is visible, but there are often so many things happening inside that cannot be allowed to surface. Strangely enough, this code of silence—of inhuman restriction—is not prescribed within the pages of my Bible. We just seem to think that we are supposed to appear perfect all the time.
In recent months, however, I’ve learned that when I open myself up, greater possibilities for ministry seem to unfold. When I admit to our ladies in our ladies’ meetings that I am fallible, that I suffer doubts, that even I struggle, they learn by my example how to pick up the pieces and continue on. This transparency has opened so many doors for ministry lately that I sometimes question why we hide ourselves behind the mask at all, an enigma to be unraveled.
This morning, however, I once again felt I should be wearing a mask over the tears, the frustration, and the shredded hope I’ve been wearing for several weeks now.
Anxiously, I reached for my Bible in the passenger seat beside me. My husband’s pickup would have to do for an office this morning.
Opening it randomly, it fell open to Judges. I began reading at Judges 8:24-27, an account of Gideon’s use of the spoils of a battle: “And Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was a thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold; beside ornaments, and collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and beside the chains that were about their camels' necks. And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it: which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house.”
For a moment, I just stared at the passage. How could that possibly speak into my life right now? I hadn’t won any victories today. I was certainly not as anointed as Gideon, nor even as successful. I was hurting.
And then I remembered my discussion with my husband a few weeks before. He had come home to see me arranging my previous trophies, sales awards, and degree certificates on our dining room table. He had laughingly asked, “What is this?”
I had turned to him almost in tears. “No, I just needed to remember after all the things that have happened lately that I’ve got what it takes…that I’m still worthwhile.”
Now I looked back on the incident which I had long forgotten and wondered, why am I being reminded of this now, Lord?
Or, could it be that my mind is so clouded this morning that it is just throwing random things around for conjecture?
But there was something there…I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
Another Flip
I opted for another flip of the page.
This time I landed in I Chronicles 20. Here I found such an interesting scenario. It seems that David as King was faced with another giant!
”And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot: and he also was the son of the giant.”
In this instance, Jonathan, a warrior under David’s command, slew the giant. It would seem to be ‘end of story,’ but for some reason, this particular challenge provoked David to number Israel.
Could he have been replaying his childhood battle in his mind, recognizing that now he had an entire nation of warriors at his command? Or did he honestly feel challenged? Just what would he do if a nation of giants were to challenge Israel?
Whatever the reason, David ordered the people to be numbered. Joab protested, saying ”The Lord make his people an hundred times so many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? Why then doth my lord require these things? Why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel?”
Both David and Gideon, I realized, were seeking validation that they could handle any foe that might challenge them.
Gideon created a trophy from the jewelry of his fallen rivals with which he could remember that he had a mighty army. Rather than the Israelites giving glory to God, they began to go “whoring after” the ephod. This is terminology often used when the children of Israel turned their backs on God and entered into idol worship.
Hence, we understand that they were worshipping this trophy, this proof of their valor. Similarly, David was placing his trust in the strength of his people by numbering how many he had ready for battle.
Jeremiah 17:5 says, “Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.”
Both of these men—who in times past had lived for God but somehow found doubt in their hearts—were guilty of trusting in their own abilities, their own past successes. And that misplaced trust was taking them further and further from trusting God.
They were leaning on the arm of flesh!
This passage in Jeremiah does not say that God will curse you if you trust in the arm of flesh. It simply says that a man who trusts his needs to man and makes flesh his arm or his security will find himself cursed.
Why? What’s the difference between God cursing you and just being cursed based on your actions?
Essentially, those who trust in man or in themselves rather than God have succeeded in blocking God’s intervention.
In Isaiah 43:13, God states, “Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?”
God is just itching to change your situation, to bless you, to prosper you, to defend you…if you can just let go of it long enough.
Finally, I understood.
I was seeking answers from doctors for my grandfather, but not from the Great Physician. I was trying to keep my job by tallying how many phone calls I made and how many accounts I could open, but not following the leading of the God who had given me the job in the first place.
Truly, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away (Job 1:21).
But, He never fails to replace the things we lose with even greater blessings…if we will just let go.
I am reminded of the early days of our marriage when my husband and I were seeking a home. We had given our earnest money for a small but beautiful home only to be told two days later that, somehow, another couple had also given their earnest money one day sooner to another agent. It was such a mix up and we were so disappointed to lose our little home.
Half in faith and half in desperation, my husband and I prayed about it and just decided that the home must have not been God’s will for us. Several days later, the agent who had made the mistake called us. He felt so bad for the mix-up that he was willing to sell us a home double the size of the first…for the same price. He had purchased the home to remodel it and resell it.
In exchange for our understanding and kind spirit over the first mistake, he paid for the second home to be completely remodeled and sold to us at a fraction of the cost.
That home has served as a wonderful place for entertaining family and friends, as well as teaching Bible Studies for the kingdom. We’ve never forgotten who really gave us the home.
Should the economy take a dive, however, and we were to lose this house, I now know that God would simply bless us with something better. He always does when we take our hands from the steering wheel.
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
And the Mask Of Self-Sufficiency. . .
Having thus read, having thus understood, I closed my Bible in the heat of the morning sun.
I went into the hospital. No, I wasn’t perfect but I didn’t have a mask on either. I just had to walk in God’s strength for a change.
My numbers at work can’t save me, but God’s Will must be performed…whatever it is. The doctors can’t save a life for they are bound by the laws of nature just as we, but God formed us and can make us new again.
That’s why I say that my hope today resides in the Lord. I now say, “When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.”
