Originally posted on August 23, 2013
I had the urge many, many months ago to shave my hair off. I didn’t, though I wanted to. The same urge returned with more fervor a few months ago. I had the clippers in hand and a friend told me not to. Then one day my entire family went on a two week road trip and I awoke one morning after spending much peaceful time meditating on God and His Word, and I just knew it was time, and that He was asking me to do it. For Him.
Cutting hair during hard times, or change is not unusual for me, or other people. I have cut my hair short, for example, after the birth of a child, or some other life event that seemed noteworthy. It wasn’t a external idea so much as an internal one; I felt changed and needed to represent that in my body somehow. Some express this same sentimentality regarding tattoos, how you can want to mark your skin to express on the outside some deep change on the inside. So clipping my hair entirely off was an extreme manifestation of that same feeling.
But it was more too. I had been going deeper and deeper into my study of God’s Word, and I had been opening myself up to His Holy Spirit, and I had been offering to him more and more of myself in this process. Until I finally decided to offer everything of me to Him. Shearing off my long, pretty hair was a symbol that I would give Him anything of myself, even my looks; my prospects for finding an earthly mate; my vanity; my pride; and essentially, my ego. I realized I wanted to only be a vessel for Him to fill with Him, not me. There is a purification inherent in it too because my hair had been through a lot over the years, increasing bouts of dyeing, stress, greying, and it wasn’t feeling healthy anymore, though I was feeling completely reborn and new.
Being a priest to me means that I serve the LORD. It means I think about Him all the time, and I come before Him ceremonially every day and worship Him. It means I delve into His Word constantly and I try to ascertain His Truth. It means I serve Him first. It means I listen to His will for me, and I try to implement it at all times.
In doing this, it necessarily means that I testify because I love Him so much I cannot keep quiet about Him. It means that I offer myself to others selflessly as I offer myself to Him. It means that I do whatever it takes to reunite people to Him because He misses them and wants them to come back to Him. It means I share insights into His Word and Spirit when I receive them, because He gives them to me. It means that I strive to unconditionally love everyone because He unconditionally loves me.
I do not believe everyone is a priest who accepts Jesus Christ as the Lord Messiah. I believe the priesthood is a higher level than mere believer. It is a place for those who are willing to sacrifice the majority of worldliness in exchange for Godliness. It is for those willing to sacrifice fleshly desires for spiritual fruits. It is for those willing to lay themselves on God’s great altar and give themselves entirely up for Him, and His will.
Love,
~Mary
~Song of Mary~ 