Taking off your "mask"

This year at CIY was filled with alot of great discussions and sermons, but one of the best ones, to me, was talking about the "masks" that we wear everyday. In our D-Group time on Tuesday we were all given a plastic mask that we were told we could decorate however we wanted to. We brought glitter, glue, markers, feathers, sequins, colored cotton balls, ribbon, construction paper....well, you get the picture. All of the kids put time and effort into creating their mask not knowing what it would be used for.

That evening, the speaker talked about the masks we put on everyday to hide ourselves from others. The mask could be the way you act around your friends so that you're "accepted" by them or so they think you're "cool;" or the jokes you tell or laugh at so that everyone thinks you are just like them. The things and the behavior that we hide behind so that others will accept us, or so we don't have to put our real selves out there and risk being hurt. It was a powerful thought. I had never really considered it in the same way they put it. But we all have a mask that we hide behind. Now, since this IS the internet and I'm not one to spill all of my life and thought out into cyber space I won't go into all of the masks that I've worn (and still wear some of them). But I could whole-heartedly relate to one of the masks that the conference director admitted to wearing. Sarcasm. Now, I know for any of you who know me it'll be hard to imagine me being sarcastic....oops, darn it, I did it again, lol. Seriously though, I have used sarcasm for as long as I can remember. But it is a mask that I use to hide behind from time to time.

We all have them. We all hide behind them. And the first thing we need to do is to identify them. At CIY we were challenged to do that. And then we were challenged to go a bit further. During the evening worship time we were challenged to remove our masks...for good. They had trash cans around the room and we were challenged to remove the masks and throw them away...and to not only do it as a figurative thing for the illustration, but to do it literally in our lives. They then took the masks and made them into a hand on a stage, representing Christ's hands that were pierced on the cross. The point was that Christ doesn't want our masks, he wants us. And that he loves and accepts us without the masks, and wants to help us take them off and leave them off.

What masks are you wearing? Do you trust Christ enough to give them up to Him?