What a MESS!

I just read this blog from Seth Barnes about messiness.  It stoked up some “stuff” – so be forewarned!

We go to very clean churches where everyone seems happy and joyful
and tidy.  We want to believe our pastors never mess up and
experience only minor issues that can be handled with a little
prayer.   We want to believe that mature Christ-followers are happy, healthy, wealthy, and never suffer.

We only include people who want to worship the same
way we do.  We want the preacher, priest, or minister to only preach
in a certain way.  We want to be around people who dress the same as
we do and live their lives like we think they should   Otherwise it
just gets too messy.  We’ve split into over 40,000 fractions of Jesus
because of it. 

We hear about three year-olds enslaved and being held in cages.  We see people dying in
masses of the messiness of genocide, AIDS, and other preventable diseases.  We watch
while young girls are taken from our backyards and sold to people who want to do unspeakable things to them.  We shed a tear and go back to our neat life. 
Some of us send money so that others can go to do something about
it.  It’s cleaner that way.

We go to clean buildings to work.  We sit in neat cubicles and type
on efficient computers.  Our kids attend orderly schools and we get neat report cards to tell us of their progress.  An “A” denotes
extra tidy work and an “F” points out extra unkempt.

We are unique yet we strive to look the same
as everyone else. 

 

Every picture we have in life reveals just how messy it is:
Birth – that is a really, really messing business.  Pain,
discomfort, sometimes agony, blood, mucus, and screams give way to
the most precious of gifts. 
Growing up – poopy diapers, baby food spit-up, drools,
awkward steps, skinned knees, dirt, spilled milk, tears, tantrums,
broken hearts, pimples, puberty, immaturity, selfishness, more
broken hearts, and mistakes.  These are the war wounds we all must
endure as humans in this journey toward adulthood.
Loving others – falling in love, falling out of love,
fighting to stay in love, siblings, parents, Aunt Martha, old
friends, lost friends, new friends, self-protective armor,
vulnerability, taking the risk to open up our hearts, shutting
down, anger, betrayal, bitterness, grief, tears, laughter, joy is
all very messy.  Yet, love is what makes the world go around. 
Sex – God’s picture to us of most intimate of unions is
certainly a messy affair.   We open ourselves up completely and
expose all our imperfections and insecurities.  We share our bodies
in a very physical way. 
Dying – our bodies fall apart either through aging or disease
or both.  Our muscles weaken, our bones degrade, our skin loosens,
our mind fails.  I’ve watched someone die and their body go through the
death throws.  I’ve seen a charred body pulled from a wreck.  I’ve
smelled burned flesh.  I’ve seen a decomposing corpse.  None of it
was clean or neat or orderly. 

Life is messy.  Living this life is messy.  Loving others is messy. 
Dying is messy. 

We could go through our lives and miss most of what life has to offer!  There is beauty in the mess.  There is adventure in the mess.  There
is redemption in the mess. 

God loved us while we were yet a complete mess.  A stinking mass of
sin.  He loved us.  God loved us enough to wipe away the stain on
our souls.  YET, our glorification (purifying) won’t happen
until our physical bodies waste away and we die.