Meandering - Beautiful Messes

"Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.”  Proverbs 14:4

Your desk may be covered with stacks of papers. Tools, plumbing parts, and pieces of drywall are perhaps scattered all over your bathroom. The desktop on your computer is littered with folder icons. Tiny hand prints are smudged all over your stainless steel appliances. Your workshop floor has heaps of sawdust and wood shavings. There are hundreds of unread emails in your inbox. Magnets, photos, and to-do-lists conceal your fridge. Uniforms from work overflow the laundry basket. All these and more, rather than causing us angst, should make us thankful for they speak of something happening. Like the mess in the farmer’s cattle stall, they are signs of life.

The messes of life may get us down, but the fact that we are even able to make messes of things, is something beautiful in itself. Your worn out shoes, scuffed furniture, dirty dishes, dented cars, relational tensions, grey hairs, wrinkles, and scars, all testify that you have been a part of life. God knows that not all things are good in our lives, but wonderfully - even through our messes, he can work all things together for good that we might reflect the beauty of Christ (Romans 8:28). So, don’t let the messiness of life sideline or discourage you. Accept, even embrace, its reality as a part of the process of becoming something greater, something beautiful, for God makes everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). 

Thanks for meandering along with me,
Pastor Daniel