Consider Lily Articles Gallery

Life in Oz by Lindsay Kyle As a child, the movie, The Wizard of Oz, was both thrilling and terrifying to me. The colors of the magical land, exhilarating. The breathtaking beauty of the magical land, awe-inspiring. The acceptance of friends, though strange and different, comforting. But something strange happened inside of me as a young child, seeing Toto run behind the emerald green curtain to reveal a puny, pathetic man pretending. The Wizard of Oz was no wizard at all. It was a sham! Not only that, but I was shammed. There was something behind the curtain I couldn’t see. I think about the disappointment of that movie quite often now that I am grown. The longer I know and interact with people, the more I realize that there’s something strange lurking behind each of our curtains. Something that works incredibly hard to pump our engines, creating the clever and incredible smoke we hide behind. And somewhere along the way of my own life, I discovered that I am no longer Dorothy--the brave, the daring, the sweet, the trusting. But I am the Wizard of Oz. The phony. The fake. The afraid. Life gives us many reasons to hide who we really are. The pressures of college, deciding on careers, and navigating the murky waters of relationships force us to question who we really are, and who we are to become. Have you ever reached a point where you have hidden for so long, that you’ve lost yourself? The scary moment comes when you believe that perhaps God cannot even see you, much less know who you really are. He cannot touch a heart that has been away for too long. In hard times, this lie is easily believed. But what is true? "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them...And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:27,31). Not only did God create you, but He also considers His work good. Our emerald curtains are useless for trying to hide ourselves from Him. He is not deceived by our smoke and mirrors. He delights in who you are. So, why do we cling to the curtain as we live in this world?