Stampin' Sisters in Christ challenge 135 . . . transparency

Happy Sunday stampers! It is time for another challenge from Stampin' Sisters in Christ. This week's hostess is the blog founder Kris, who selected this verse Colossians 1:27b "...Christ in you, the hope of glory". Her challenge for this week is to use something transparent, acetate, vellum, etc., somewhere on your card. And our sponsor this week is Serendipity, the source of the toadstool and leaves image in my card. Such detailed, lovely stamps, you can find the company web site right here. I had lots of fun coloring this image.

And you can find Kris' thoughts on her chosen verse and see the rest of the creations by our design team right here. We have less than one week left for our design team call, so if you are interested in becoming a member of the Stampin' Sisters in Christ blog team, look for details on our home page.

Christ in you, the hope of glory . . . what does that verse mean exactly? I'm not a bible scholar, but there is a difference to me between heart knowledge and head knowledge. If you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, do you acknowledge that in an intellectual sense or in a heart sense, meaning do you think about it on Sundays or does it affect your daily walk?

The idea here is not that we ourselves become greater or more important or more . . . of anything really, but that we decrease and Christ increases. Our walk, or the things we do day to day as we study God's word and strive to learn from Jesus' example is supposed to increasingly exhibit Christ to others around us. Never so that they say, 'wow, look at that person' but to point them to Jesus' example.

Years ago as a gift to my mother I had framed some needlework that her mother and grandmother had stitched. These are precious momentos from generations past and to protect the work I had the framer cover the needlework with glass. No one walks up to the needlework pictures and exclaims about the glass in the frame, they are focusing on the picture underneath. To me, that's the idea behind this verse and Kris' challenge . . . we are to become more and more transparent ourselves so that the Word of God and the love of God is what people see. If we accept Jesus as our Lord in an intellectual sense I don't think it ever is deep enough to achieve this transparency, it has to be the movement of our hearts. When we truly have it in our hearts then it becomes what we live and breathe every day, it becomes our daily walk, and that's when the transparency can begin, when people in the world around you can see Christ in and through you.

Wishing you a blessed week.

Stamps: Serendipity
Ink: black memento
Paper: random DP, confetti white, fine linen, vellum
Other: copics, twine, copper EP, spellbinders