Shutters

Matthew 7:24-27

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them,

may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And the rain fell,

and the floods came,

and the winds blew and slammed against that house;

and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.

Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them,

will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

The rain fell,

and the floods came,

and the winds blew and slammed against that house;

and it fell—and great was its fall.”

 

 All of us are building a life (house).





Rain comes to every life.

Floods come to every life.

Winds will blow and slam in every life.

 

When I think about this kind of storm I imagine shingles flying off the roof.

Siding coming loose and flapping in the breeze.

And I think about shutters.

 

At one time shutters were hung on homes so that they could be closed 

and were used as protection during a storm. 

Today the shutters on many homes are stationary.

They may resemble the real thing, but they are merely decorative.

They might look good, but they would be useless in a storm.

We all have shutters we have attached to our lives- things we think will protect us when we find ourselves in the midst of a storm but sometime we confuse what is real with what is decorative.

A good storm will reveal if our shutters are real,

but even real shutters are useless if they are not put to use.

 

Most of us have weathered storms.

We are battered and worn and scarred.

What some do not know

and we all sometimes forget

is that our scars have a beauty that cannot be replicated-

they are the scars of survival.

Scars that are a testimony to the truth

that if our life is built on doing what God tells us to do

that we will be found standing after the storm passes.

Things will never be the same,

but we serve a God who loves us,

One who has the power and desire

to take what is left after the storm

and build something new,

something beautiful

something valuable

in our lives.

 

 When I think about shutters I also think of camera shutters.

(thank you wikipedia for the following explanation)

In photography, a shutter is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period of time, for the purpose of exposing photographic film or a light-sensitive electronic sensor to light to capture a permanent image of a scene. A shutter can also be used to allow pulses of light to pass outwards, as in a movie projector or signal lamp.

 

The word of God is full of truth.

Hearing the word and knowing its truths is not enough.

We must act on those truths.

We need to allow the shutters we have in our minds to open up

and allow the Light of the Word of God

to make a permanent image of His truths in our lives.

His truths teach us how to act and react to the world around us.

They teach us how to allow His light to pass outwards

so that we are projecting images of what life lived in Him looks like.