A Passing Thing

I like being liked.  It makes me feel complete and ...healthy, somehow. 
It's almost like finding a hidden superpower -- because when the feedback is positive and steady, I am charged up for any obstacle.  For a little while.
Time and time again I have noted and railed against this internal inclination, stiffening my resolve to find my identity in a deeper place rather than hanging out on the thin ice of public opinion.  But it is the bent of my heart to want the approval of people around me. 

Today's message was about being trampled by suffering.  For me that is living in a narrow corridor of disapproval, dislike and what even feels like hatred.  I didn't think I wanted to hear anything else about that crippling place, and I focused on the details of the sweetly snoozing infant a few feet away, delighting as a grin split her dreaming face.  Her eyebrows lifted in the form of surprise before all those dainty features stretched again into a one-month baby smile.  And then words from Daniel wrested my attention to horns that were growing and being broken off and more erupting, with everything pointing in different directions (but surely "the beautiful land" meant there was something good?) until I was reminded of a battle scene of intermingling forms and faces and I wanted to call out, "What color are the good guys wearing?!"
It turns out the point was hope.  Hope.  Despite the losses caused by (perhaps?) some of the horns which were bad, there was ultimate victory.
Still, the time of defeat was almost complete.  All the externals were stripped away, the wounds were staggering, and rescue had to come from an outside source.
Suddenly, this mysterious passage sounded so familiar.

It is only when the work of my hands is exposed as the rotting filth of self-righteousness that I can be freed to repentance.
It is only in the absence of affection that I turn toward the source of all love.
It is only when I lose my life that I find it. 

Likely, there were other take home points intended.  But I have spent too much time considering the hideous beast that seems to prevail; it was good to remember the Ancient of Days. 

“For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” J.R.R. Tolkien