Disemble nor cloak

I have always loved that language in 1662 Matins and Evensong in the confession which tells us that we should not "disemble nor cloak" our sins before God.

As a child sitting in a Sunday evening Church as the shadows lengthened these words conjured up all sorts of images of slightly sinister figures in long outfits, lurking in the shadows. It was all very dramatic.

And then this evening's Psalm 119 starts at verse 73 and says simply that God made me. It is funny how we are pulled to notice things and I noticed this evening that huge difference between the shadowy and slightly frightening figures of my own imagination and the reality of a God who had put me together so carefully.

The Psalms are full of this language of God's careful creation and it is language we should not skip over - for if God carefully creates it is with love and for beauty - whatever the world's standards might be. The shadowy figures of hiding who we really are, really are of our own imagining - that is not what God wants.

In the old Church, as the sun disappeared there would always be pools of light which hit the interior and deep shadows would seem to form around them - we can cloak ourselves in the darkness or step out into God's puddles of sunshine.