There’s creation and life going on. My kids are home!
We’ve been kicking up the dust that settled since summer, when job commitments and school hushed the household and our “planned” lives resumed.
The long Thanksgiving weekend has brought chaos, messes and activity…projects and pranks, dog hair flying, continuous cycles of dirty and clean dishes, wet towels, art assignments, shifting cars in the driveway, furniture rearranged and fullness in my heart. It’s a mess here, a beautiful mess.
So is the community of God.
From the Old Testament to New, God’s people are just plain messy. But it’s in the messes that God does beautiful work. I have to recognize that the more people I allow in my life, the ratio for potential mess is elevated…and that’s good. Because the greater the messes, the greater evidence of His activity and hand, as I (we) allow God to work through the messiness.
So why do we cover up our messes or the messes of others and sweep them under the rug or into a drawer when someone enters our “house”? What would community look like if we all allowed the Spirit of God to hover over our chaos…and we acknowledged that together, our messes foster environments that bring new creation and transformation?
People make life messy. They make our calendars messy, inboxes messy and texts messy and sometimes our houses messy.
Messes are not something to be avoided, but embraced.
Messes are the environments that grow relationships, where the creativity of God and discipleship happens – where beauty emerges in the grace of it all.