The Wall Nobody Sees
by Royce
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi
Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, theologian, and Sufi mystic — born in 1207, he spent his life searching for union with God, and his words have outlasted empires. He was not a Christian. But he was a man who looked unflinchingly at the human heart and described what he found there with an honesty that still cuts across eight centuries.
He saw that the problem with love is rarely the absence of it. The problem is what we build against it. He got close to the answer. This devotional is about how the Gospel gets us the rest of the way.
Do you change the subject when the conversation gets too close? Or you get busy — genuinely, productively busy — right around the time someone tries to check in on you. You give answers that are true but not quite honest. You laugh a little too quickly. You ask questions so you don’t have to answer them. You help people so thoroughly that nobody thinks to ask if you need help too.
Nobody taught you to do this. You just learned, somewhere along the way, that the composed version of you gets further in this world than the real one. So the real one stays behind the wall. And the wall is so well-built by now, so load-bearing, that you’ve forgotten it’s even there.
Rumi saw this with uncomfortable precision: “There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?” The void isn’t the absence of love. It’s the presence of a wall that keeps love at arm’s length — and the deepest brick in that wall is a fear most high-performers never say out loud: I don’t belong if I’m not performing.
Rumi’s prescription is to do the inner work. Locate the barriers. Dismantle them yourself, and love will flow. “Why are you knocking at every other door? Go, knock at the door of your own heart.” He’s not wrong to send you inward. The wall is real, and it does need to be found.
But here’s what Rumi couldn’t have known: you don’t just build walls to keep people out. You build them because you are terrified of what’s on the inside. The wall isn’t only facing outward. It’s facing inward too — because somewhere deep down, you suspect that if you looked closely enough at what’s really there, even you couldn’t bear it.
And yet. Before you dare yourself to knock — there is Someone already knocking. And the one at the door is not surprised by any of it. He has already seen everything behind the wall — not from a distance, but from the very beginning. Before your first performance. Before your first defence mechanism. Before you took your first breath.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” — Jeremiah 1:5
He knew you then. He knows you now. And He knocks not as an inspector come to assess the damage, but as a healer who has already seen the wound and already prepared the remedy. He loved you in your mother’s womb — before you had anything to offer, before you had a single wall to hide behind. That love has not changed because the walls went up.
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.” — Revelation 3:20
The Gospel doesn’t ask you to dismantle the wall before love arrives. It tells you love arrived first — and is waiting, patiently, on the other side of it.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” — Romans 5:8
Not after the walls came down. Not once you’d done enough inner work to qualify. While. While the behaviours were fully intact — the subject-changing, the strategic busyness, the answers that are true but not quite honest. Love didn’t wait for your best version. It came through the wall before you thought to open the door.
Rumi wrote, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” He was close. But in the Gospel, the light doesn’t enter because you finally let it in. It enters because Someone bore the wound himself, on your behalf, before you made a single move toward openness.
This means the fear — I don’t belong unless I hold it together — is not a wall you have to demolish brick by brick before God’s love becomes real. It’s a lie the Cross already answered. You were fully known — the composed version and everything behind it — and loved anyway.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” — Isaiah 53:5
This is grace: not that you found a way through the wall, but that the one who bore your wounds already declared you healed, whole, and loved — fully knowing what was behind it. The wall has no meaning anymore. Not because you tore it down. But because the verdict is already in, and it was never condemnation.
You are not loved because you opened up. You are loved because He is gracious. That was true before you built the first brick. It is true now. And it will be true long after the wall comes down.
Reflection
- Which behaviour showed up most in the mirror above — and what are you protecting yourself from when it appears?
- If God’s love reached you before any wall came down, what are you still trying to earn — and from whom?
Prayer
Father, I am tired of composing myself for everyone, including You. I confess I have kept the mess hidden and called it strength. Meet me here — not after I’ve opened up, not once I’ve done the work — but now, while the walls are still standing. Remind me that Your love didn’t wait for my best version. Teach me to receive what I keep trying to earn. Amen.