You have to hand it to the media.  They have done their job well.  When you see commercials on television, ads in magazines, displays in the mall windows, you almost believe your life would be perfect if you only had the shiny black Jaguar, sleek and elegant, making all of your neighbors sit up and take notice, or designer clothing to wear.   We place the diploma on the wall to validate the exclusive school we attended.  We hang out with influential people who help us in our careers.  We take extended vacations and may live in the most exclusive gated communities. When we go home and are in the quietness of our room, no one knows how empty inside we truly are.

I saw this happen in my adoptive home. One day it would be flying lessons.  A month later it was showing a pure bred cocker spaniel at exclusive dog shows.  Then it was a newly built house and another car.  Not just any car — a Mercedes Benz.  And a newly built office.  I became very confused.

My adoptive father never said anything when I became a Christian.  My mother glared at me as we rode home from camp.  From the outside the preacher and elders believed everything fine.  They didn’t know how wrong they were, and I was afraid to speak, for I knew my adoptive parents would send me away if I did.  So I suffered.  The elders and preacher saw one side of that door, but the inside was quite a different experience.

The new house now belongs to another.  The high end cars are gone.  The influential friends are deceased.  And in the end . . . . . what was it worth?  Nothing. . . .

In our quieter, more introspective moments.  Who are we really?  When all the make-up, clothes, diplomas, influential friends and position have been stripped away, what do our hearts look like?  Have we filled our hearts with the temporal or the spiritual?

“But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him:  for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”     I Samuel 16:7

“It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man – the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse – the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.”      ~ Washington Irving

“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness.  The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”    ~ Hoffer

Our Lord spoke of pretenses.

“Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to His disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:  All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works:   for they say, and do not.  For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.  But all their works they do for to be seen of men:  they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.”
Matthew 23:1-7

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer:  therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”    Matthew 23:14

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.  Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”     Matthew 23:27-28

Eileen Light