Pedestals and Podiums

     One might look upon this image and see a young, beautiful woman. Her long, brown hair flows with the wind, caressing her perfectly sculpted cheek bones. She doesn’t smile, nor does she look to be showing any sign of joy, but her eyes say it all.

She is what her friends call, “the perfect woman.”

But even though they may gaze upon her infinite beauty, they have no idea of what goes on inside her head. All that they can see is the image that lies in front of them.

They will never understand the torment that haunts her every time she looks in the mirror, nor the demons around her that whisper terrible lies.

One will never know the gifts that God has given her, nor the trials that he has put her through.

One will never know of the mistakes that she has made, nor the goals that she has achieved.

     

     The public judges by the image of people that they see. They never even consider looking deeper into the story that lies on the front page of the tabloid newspaper. It never once crosses their mind that that image is perhaps a human being just like them.

     

     We as humans place normal people, just like you and me, on pedestals. We glorify them until their very life and soul gets sucked out of them. We take away their freedom to mess up, but what’s even worse is that we take away their right to be forgiven.

If someone ever heard about even one of this lovely woman’s mistakes, he would never be able to look at her the same. But if someone were to hear about what she has given up to glorify God, he would place her on a pedestal as high as the sky.

The only human that we have placed on a podium who didn’t disappoint us, was Jesus Christ, and yet even the Jews stripped Him of His pedestal and killed Him because He didn’t live up to their expectations.

     

      No matter who or what it is, we always feel the need to exult or put down others. It’s human nature, but it must be stopped. People get hurt, and people get killed. Maybe not physically, like Jesus Christ, but emotionally and spiritually. They get driven to drugs and alcohol. They become the very thing that they wished never to be. We expect so much out of them.

We slowly kill them.

And there is only one person who can save them, and they reject Him time and time again.

Our Lord Jesus Christ.