At times, I feel like a mannequin. Lifeless — but dressed up for many roles and responsibilities. Faceless — but somehow having to fit in with fashionable expectations of those around me. Wherever I look, there is a need. Why do I act as if life depends on me? I am the mannequin who is frozen to the spot. Present but helpless to do much about all of the demands life brings.
In the darkest moments, the light switches off in the store. I am the mannequin in the dark. The manager turns his back, and locks up, leaving me there. Until tomorrow. Then it starts again, and I am the mannequin in the window, watching the world spin by.
The mannequin is dressed to someone else’s idea of what looks good. Be this. Do that. Today. Tomorrow. Next year. Right now. Could be better. Not enough. This cannot be the voice of my gentle and lowly Saviour. All demanding and changing like a shifting shadow, when I know that He is not like that at all (James 1:17).
Life appears like a sliding scale of expectations, constantly moving backwards and forwards; tasks are never completely finished, and satisfaction seeps through the fingertips. So we move on in the pursuit of something else. Always needy, but looking everywhere but Christ to meet that need.
Imagine a baby who has bitten through the umbilical cord with no teeth or strength, just in the hope it’s free. An impossible, ridiculous and slightly grotesque image, but aren’t we like that sometimes? We try to do things apart from the very One who gives us life, but it is life-taking, soul-crushing, and utterly depleting.
Yes, we are needy and dependent, but we can be free too.
Just not apart from Christ.
It is in Jesus that we have life that sustains and nourishes us for every circumstance. In Him we live, move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). We are not mannequins at all.
Lord help me.
I cannot easily drown out the cacophony of noise from life’s expectations or demands. I desperately want to seek harmony in every part of life — like an orchestra, not this chaotic, freestyle, one-man band.
And yet, when I sleep, my lungs continue to work; I am breathing, alive, and resting. Sustained and dependent on the One who first saw me before the foundations of the world. Formed and framed in my mother’s womb. The Lord never slumbers or sleeps. The noise of the demands and drowning moments of life quietens, and I rest in His everlasting arms.
Secure and steadfastly loved all day in the unchanging affections of my Father’s loving gaze for His daughter. He chose me, Christ died for me, and by the power of His Spirit, I can live a joyously dependent life on Him alone. He has made a way for me to be rested and restored, reconciled and redeemed, righteous and renewed.
‘Reliance on ourselves is no option in light of the cross,’ writes Michael Reeves. ‘However fantastically marvellous we may think we are, the cross is God’s verdict on us as sinners. It annihilates even the possibility of finally placing our trust in ourselves. Meaning we can know a far greater assurance, anchoring it in firm ground outside ourselves, in Christ’ (Christ Our Life, p. 50).
On days where I feel like I am nothing more than a mannequin, the wonderful truth and reality is that I am not. I am not lifeless — I am overflowing with the abundant life of Christ in me. I am not faceless — I am known, and my Heavenly Father watches my going out and my coming in (Psalm 121:8). I am not left alone in the dark by a store manager at the end of the day; I am walking in the light of my Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth, now and forevermore.
In Christ and His death on the cross, life is no longer a sliding scale of unmet expectations and fruitless self-reliance; it is secure, steady and solid, which is the greatest news for living and breathing, soon-to-be resurrected children of God.
Ruth Clemence – Writer and Blogger 