While it's the end of another week on Things Unseen, and we've spent these few minutes

each day this week reflecting on what I've called soul shapes, it wouldn't surprise

me if this week some of us have either thought or heard words like this. Something seems

to have bent him out of shape today. It may be because they're irritated and irritating

or they're moody and uncommunicative. That's obvious. But what isn't so obvious about

this being bent out of shape is why it's happened. We see the effects, but we don't always

know the reason, the cause. And that's what I mean by a person's soul shape, the inner

distortion that takes place invisibly in our hearts, that manifests itself either quickly

or slowly in patterns of life that are uncrised like.

Earlier in the week I mentioned how helpful something I read in Robert Murray McShane's

diary has been to me, the seeds of every known sinner in my heart. But at the same time

as we've noticed we're individuals and sinful distortions manifest themselves in particular

ways in particular people. We've a common disease, the same basic distortion, but it shapes

itself individually. When I was growing up, toothpaste used to come in metallic-type tubes.

And sometimes little nicks or holes would appear and as you squeeze the toothpaste instead

of it coming out the mouth of the tube it would come out one of these little nicks and

the siden. Then when you put your finger on that nick to try to prevent the toothpaste

coming out, whenever you squeeze the tube the toothpaste seemed to find another little

nick from which to emerge. And I used to think that that was a parable of the way sin

works in our lives. Our sinfulness manifests itself at particular points of our spiritual

weakness and we try to cover that point up, but then it just reappears in another form.

sin will always out. And the fact that it appears in one guys in my life and another guys

...