Blind-Eyed Hometowns

"Then Jesus told them, 'A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.'" Mark 6:4

There is a strange irony in the fact that a prophet is not honored in their own hometown.

It is often that the things we have to offer the world - the things of the most value and the things that are filled with our truest destinies - are the very same things that our closest friends and family cannot even see are there. (I think Jesus could just as well have said that a prophet is often not even honored in his own heart and his own mind - because we are often our own worst critics and judges.)

The joy of one family member is mocked as silliness and foolishness, when it is that very joy that they were born to bring into the world. The intelligence and incredible knowledge bound up in another family member are laughed at as unnecessary and extravagant, when it is that very knowledge and intelligence that was meant to one day reveal a great mystery to the world.

If we're not careful our hometowns will laugh our gifts inside us forever.

I don't know why it's true, but it is: The most precious gift that I have to give to the world is the very same gift that most of my closest family and friends will at the very least misunderstand and at most seek to devalue and destroy within me. It is a brutal attack of isolation and confusion that the enemy deploys against every single one of us, and it is the reason why so few of us ever step outside of that unbelieving hometown circle to dance for the waiting masses.

Strangely, it is when we happen to stumble outside of our hometown and family, carrying our gift with us into the light of the outside world, that we are often seen for who we really are and our gift is applauded for what it truly is... Undeniable Glory, placed there by our Father in heaven.

I remember the first time I read a creative writing piece I'd written in front of my entire high school English class. Deep down inside I think I knew that what I was offering to them that day was somehow bound up in my very identity and my very purpose for living. But I'd never before had the courage to offer so much of my gift to the world up until that point, because I had yet to discover just how powerful my one small gift could be in this world.

Looking back, it's funny that it took me so long to realize just how important my writing was - I'd been writing little books and plays and poems and journal entries and extravagant birthday cards since I was little. It's just that, to my family, that was my normal. And who would give honor to something so commonplace and everyday?

But, that day in English class, when I'd finished reading the piece, through nervously blurred eyes and shaking lips, I looked up and I knew that I had danced a danced that none of them had ever seen before. My teacher proudly led the class in applauding what I had just given to them all and I knew that I had touched something inside myself that I could not live without. I had tasted something of my destiny.

Less than a year later, I started this blog - because I realized in that circle of acquaintances something that I had never before realized in the circle of my closest family and friends....

I was born to write truth and beauty into the world.

Don't get me wrong, I was thankfully born into a family that did not mock the gifts inside of me. They simply didn't honor the gifts I had to offer the world the way they were meant to be honored - and the way that my high school English class was able to honor them from their place farther removed and objective.

And I don't really know why I finally opened my computer today and wrote a blog post on a blog that I haven't written on in many many months... But I think I needed to remember the gift inside myself and the honor that I had forgotten to give to that precious gift.

Because when what you have to give to the world is not honored as it should be in your own hometown (and your own heart for that matter)... sometimes the only desperate and true thing you can do is to run outside those four walls and sing your song to someone who has never heard it before. And the wonder-filled look that you see on their faces once you're through, will remind you of the glory you have stored up within your chest and the life that you have to offer to those waiting outside your small hometown.

It is often only then that we remember who we truly are:

Prophets born into blind-eyed hometowns.