Blotches

Anyone that knows me well can tell you about my blotches.
That’s what I call them.
I get red very easily!

It doesn’t matter the reason.
Happy, sad, afraid, nervous, excited…
It’s all the same.

My barometer.
The determiner of my emotions.

That is why I love to wear scarves so much.
Scarves are a fashionable way to hide blotches.

My emotions are right on my face…and my neck…and my upper arms.
I can’t hide the red blotches that suddenly appear!
My blotches are my gauge to any situation.
Apparently, everyone else’s gauge as well, since they are there for everyone to see.

Blushing puts me in an incredibly vulnerable situation.
My emotions are an open book.
You can tell what I am feeling by looking at my face.
You just have to wait and see whether I am red or not.

When I was a teenager, I really wanted a mood ring.
Two New York inventors designed the mood ring in 1975.
It was believed that body heat fluctuates with your emotional state.

The stone of a mood ring is really a hollow quartz in a glass shell.
The shell contains thermotropic liquid crystals.
Changes in temperature causes the crystal to reflect different wavelengths of light, which changes the color of the stone.

The crystals are calibrated using the average person’s body temperature.
The mood ring usually has a blue or green color.
The temperature of your finger increases as more blood flows to your extremities.
Blushing will cause your temperature to go up.

My mood ring always remained on the violet end of the spectrum.
The mood ring never worked for me!

My blotches are a part of me.
In some strange way, I would miss them if they went away.
I cannot hide the way I really feel about anything.

From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of My people as though it were not serious. “Peace, Peace,” they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. (Jeremiah 6:13-15)

Have we forgotten how to blush?
Does anything surprise us any more?

Gone are the days when a man would stop telling a tasteless story in front of a woman.
Gone are the days when people would walk out of a movie theater when they are offended.
Gone are the days when people apologized for their rude language.

Gone are the days…or are they?

They could easily come back again if we uphold God’s standards.

…find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. (Ephesians 5:10-12)

Somehow we bought into the lie.
We have lowered the bar so drastically, we can only slither underneath.

We should blush at offensive things.
We should say no to indecency.
We should not give the appearance of acquiescence by looking the other way.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices, and have put on a new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Colossians 3:5-10)

God wants us to blush!
It is good to have a built-in barometer for God’s standards.

Our feelings and emotions are God-given gifts.
Why hide them?

Put away my scarves?
No!

Matthew Henry, Presbyterian minister and Bible commentator, commented on blushing.
He said, Blushing is the color of virtue.

I guess my blotches are not so bad after all!