By Chris WittsWednesday 11 Oct 2023Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
I wonder if you’ve heard the name Frank Warren. Now, Frank’s an American who one night had an unusual dream when he was staying in Paris, and this dream was weird. He had three postcards that he bought that day. This was 2003, by the way. So the next day he went and bought 3000 blank postcards. He walked down the street, handing them out, leaving some in public places for people to take.
And he stood near the subway stations. He left them in art galleries and even went to the library and slipped them between the pages of a library book. Certainly, an unusual thing to do. But here was Frank Warren, encouraging people to write anonymously, write to him a secret that they’d never confessed before and put them, put the postcard in the mail to him. Now a few trickled in, then about 100 then 1000 and that grew to hundreds of thousands of postcards being posted directly to him.
So he insisted that your secret had to be true, something that you’d not told anyone. Some were silly. Some were serious. Some were quite shocking. But this is what Frank Warren said after seeing thousands of secrets, he said, I understand that sometimes when we believe we’re keeping a secret that secret is actually keeping us. That’s all in the website called Post Secret.
So Frank Warren posts these comments. Sometimes people do artwork on their postcard, and he gets about 1 million hits each day.
The secrets that keep us
Amazing. And people reveal all sorts of secrets, things they’ve said or done or things that have been done to them. Things that they were embarrassed about or ashamed of, or secret things that they want.
And not everyone approves of post secret. But Post Secret has touched a nerve, especially among young people who want to share something. One person said. My secret. I almost never know what to say when someone asks me, How are you?
It’s probably the question in life I hate more than any other. I mean, really, people pay thousands of dollars for therapy to find this out. How the heck am I supposed to know? How am I?
So that’s just one. Frank Warren’s been giving expressions to secrets for quite a while now. People who feel guilty and he gets letters and he quotes things like “Sometimes just the act of sharing a painful secret can relieve some of my pain” or “Dear Frank. So many of my secrets are there without even sending a card, another one said after I created my postcard. I don’t want to be the person with that secret anymore. I ripped up the postcard and I decided to make some changes myself in my life.”
I found that an intriguing thing. And it’s true. There are people who carry about secret hurts. Now some people wear their emotions on their sleeves. There’s no secret to the hurts, they tell everyone, but other people are haunted by things they’ve done or trapped. There’s a sense of shame or fear or this overriding feeling. What are other people going to think about me? I think if we were honest here we all have our hurts in the closet things we don’t want anyone to know about.
Some of these things may be superficial, but other things are so deep and personal that we wouldn’t tell anybody anything. We’re afraid of looking bad. And the psychologists tell us that burying your secret is never a good thing. It causes damage.
Now the Bible says in Hebrews 4:13. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight, for everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
We can deceive ourselves. We can say all sorts of lies to ourselves like “Oh, no one will ever know; what they won’t know won’t hurt them. It’s OK, it’ll work out.”
But the Bible has another message. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. In the blood of Jesus. His son purifies us from all sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins purifying us from all unrighteousness.
Let’s Pray
Heavenly Father, thank you that with you there are no secrets. Even if we want to keep a secret. Lord, you know all there is about us. Amen.