Be Real

He said to them, ‘Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.
Lk.17:24

I'm reminded of Mrs Turpin's end-times vision in Flannery O'Connor's short story, Revelation.

"She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. 

And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the given wit to use it right…. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away."

I know I'm going to be shocked at who is ahead of me on the narrow road, the freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. Their naked need is more honest and welcome in heaven than my forced piety.

Jesus, help me be real in my brokenness, at least with you.