SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

How-EB-White-Wove-Charlottes-Web“I am a man of medium height.”  This is the opening line of a unique New Yorker piece by E. B. White from 1944.  It is entitled “About Myself,” and in it he barrages us with information about himself, and his wife Katherine.  His selective service number is 10789.  His fire-insurance policy number is 424747.  His wife’s medication serial number is 49345.  Her ration books are 40288EW and 158347CD.  His are 40289EW and 159378CD.  He goes on to give the registration number for his dog, the identification numbers of all his medications, his insurance policies, his kitchen appliances, and on and on.  Throughout, he continues to remind us that he is a man of medium height – therein lies the comedy.  The serious point he is working towards in the piece is when he gives us his number from his service in the army.  He ends with the sentence, “The number of that war was One.”;

            That was the chilling part for readers nearly 70 years ago.  The thing that makes this piece so modern is the way he describes himself as a series of numbers - numbers maintained and managed by the machinery of modern life.  It has only gotten worse.  Exponentially worse.  It is because of this “worseness” that the most startling thing he does, for 21st century readers, is to record there, in the first paragraph, his social security number (067-01-9841), and that of his wife (067-01-9807).  Unless one is the president of some identity-security company one would never (EVER) do that nowadays. 

            There are few things more feared than identity theft.  There is no easier way to have your identity stolen than to make your social security number known.  We have to keep our identities secret as best we can.  We learn even earlier, not to tip our hand, show our cards in other ways.  To expose our true thoughts and feelings too frequently and to too many is just as dangerous – now that we are all jaded and worldly-wise.  When God tells us to “confess your transgressions to one another” (James 5.16), we may smile knowingly, wish that perhaps we had someone to confide in, or stop our ears up altogether – but we rarely obey.

            A danger in this is that we might get good at hiding things from ourselves.  A greater danger is that we may come to believe we can hide things from God.  If either (or both) are true about us, how will we ever be able to repent?  If we neither obey, nor repent, how will we ever be saved?  The bitter irony of this state is that nothing is hidden from God anyway (Mark 4.22).  The classic passage on our openness before God is Psalm 139.

Oh LORD you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I get up. You understand my thoughts from afar.  You scrutinize my path and my lying down.  You are intimately acquainted with all my ways…..(vv.1-3).

            There are no secrets kept from God.  None.  He knows what we were thinking about instead of thinking of the cross during communion.  He knows the mixed motives we had for doing that good deed last week.  He knows the thing we really wanted to say when we said “That’s Okay.”  He knows what reveries were triggered by that full page advertisement in the sports magazine we were innocently reading.  He knows. 

            He sees.  He hears.  He knows.  He loves.  He is eager to forgive.  Are we willing to be honest?  Are we willing to repent?  Are we willing to be honest about ourselves?

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