O to be Like Thee!

O to be Like Thee!

“Music is an outburst of the soul.”  (Frederick Delius, composer)  So to encourage my soul and admonish my soul, I often sing on the way to work.  Perhaps that is one of the advantages of a little longer commute.  I often am not ready for the noise of the radio or CD player, but am willing to listen to my own voice.

          One of my greatest desires is to be like Jesus, to reflect Him in everything I do, even in my facial expressions and the way I listen to people, the way I respond to people.

          So yesterday morning on the way to school I was singing,

O to be like Thee,

O to be like Thee,

Blessed Redeemer, pure as Thou art.

Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness,

Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

Then I sang,

                        Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,

                        All His wonderful passion and purity.

                        O Thou Spirit Divine, all my nature refine,

                        Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.

          Suddenly I thought, “All my nature refine?  Wait a minute! That means getting rid of the impurities!  You know, hard times, difficult times, pointing out all the things in my life that aren’t like Him.  Ouch!  Maybe. . . . ?”

          So sure enough, yesterday was a day that I was dragged through my own dirt and overwhelmed by my inadequacies.  I was emotionally exhausted by the end of the day.  My eyes were puffy and I dragged myself home and went to bed early.

          I haven’t been able to get away from that concept.  If I truly want to be like Jesus, I will have to change some things.  And, as I tell my speech students, if you don’t know what you are doing, you won’t fix it.  So this painful period of seeing where I fail is necessary to refine me so the beauty of Jesus can be seen in me.

          Psalm 17:15 says, “I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your image.”  The day is coming when I will be found in His image.  How I long for that day!  I will be like Him one day.  Until then, the refining, purifying process must go on to make me more like Him.

                                                                      ~~Faith Himes Lamb