CRUMBLING FACADES

I’m sure if you live in the Indy area, you have heard about the Eyeglass World building collapse.  It’s quite a sight to see.  We didn’t know about until we were near it about an hour and a half after it collapsed.  It was amazing to see it up close.  The whole front of the store was laying on the front sidewalk and part of the building was laying on top of parked cars.

It was one of those sights that you see, yet you have trouble comprehending what you actually saw.  Buildings don’t just do that everyday.  I have driven through that parking lot dozens of times to get from Office Depot to County Line.  I’m still in a state of wonder as I write this some six hours after seeing it for the first time.

I really shouldn’t be saying that it was a building collapse, because the building didn’t actually collapse—it was the facade in front that collapsed.  The building is simply a square building, but there was this facade that overhung the front that held the sign.  Dictionary.com explains what a facade is:

1.  Architecture.

a.  the front of a building, esp. an imposing or decorative one.

b.  any side of a building facing a public way or space and finished accordingly.

And that got me thinking…there is another definition for facade:

2.  a superficial appearance or illusion of something: They managed somehow to mantain a facade of wealth.

For the most part, we all have a facade or two—a mask that we wear around certain people.  Why do we do that?  Why do we try to be someone we’re not?  We need to get rid of those facades and be real people.  By wearing those masks, all we are doing is hurting ourselves, hurting others, and hurting our witness.  To reach hurting people, they need to know that we hurt and struggle at times also.  My belief is that unbelievers don’t care if we sin; what they care about and can’t stand is that we act as if we don’t sin.  We need to be authentic with one another; we need to be real people.  We don’t need to put on our church clothes and our church faces and pretend everything is okay.(The italicized is a paraphrase of something a dear sister in the Lord once said.)  In order to be whole—to be the person God intended us to be, we need to reveal and heal our wounds.

Check out this video on YouTube and be sure to listen closely to the words.

What’s amazing is that, according to all the news channels that I checked, nobody was injured in that facade collapse at Eyeglass World.  And that’s the way it will be when we allow our facades to collapse—there may be some discomfort and pain at first, but there won’t be any serious injuries.