Things from Beneath

There are many things that are on the inside of every person. Some things are great and wonderful characteristics that shine through them on an every day bases, but there are some horrible things that we keep hide away. This could be explained using many different illustrations and metaphors. Dr. Tony Roach does a great job of explaining this by using the term “Old Self”. He attaches this principle to Romans chapter 7 when Paul is explaining the inward struggle that he was having. This concept is explained in more detail in his book “God’s Love Bank.

I would like to attempt to explain this concept by using the illustration of an iceberg. An iceberg is a large mass of ice floating in the sea. It is literally an ice mountain. It is a beautiful but dangerous sight. It is beautiful because it looks like a huge crystal diamond floated along the sea. Can you image the sparkle and glare from it as the sun shines on it? The dangerous thing is that it has proven to be fatal to captains of ships that don’t avoid them.

Another unique and most important characteristic of an iceberg is its two dimensions. Those dimensions are described as what is seen and what is unseen. The seen is the beautiful, shining, and pointed upper part of it. The other dimension is the unseen part. This part is the most dangerous and larges part of the iceberg. This is the part of the iceberg that is so deceiving to ship captains because of the uncertainty of its size. Without proper equipment to help a captain see underneath the water, the captain can run the ship into the beneath part of the iceberg while they are a great distance from the above water portion.

I believe we as people are very much like icebergs. They are beautiful on the surface. With all of our great physical attributes and those character traits that we love to display, but the essence of who we really are still lies beneath. There are many things that are beneath that and unseen that hurt or help those who come in contact with us. Those who have been abused in life have the anger, hurt, and embarrassment floating beneath. It effects how we perceive anyone that we meet that has the same characteristics of the one that abused us. Although they have no intentions of harming us, we remain skeptical of them. This is just one example of many things that are beneath the waters of our lives. The challenge of every Christian is to first acknowledge what is beneath. Many of us go through life trying to convince ourselves that some things are not beneath the water.
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If you do not acknowledge them, they can not be death with. How we respond to things in life is based on what is underneath and not from what is above. This month we will explore a few things that are beneath, and try to give some way of dealing with them.