A Beautiful Mess

Studying God’s word incessantly while fasting can really mess with you.

So can a mission trip to a developing country or a homeless community.

A switch has been flipped and like a fan clearing smoke from a room, the fog is clearing and I am finding myself consumed by God’s words and His very heart.

There’s a sweet ever-present conversation happening between us now that’s deep, intimate, and sometimes painful.

In short, it’s really rearranging my life, my dreams, and my goals; this Christianized American dream I was so busy chasing.

Isaiah 58 (NIV)

 ² For day after day they seek me out;
    they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
    and has not forsaken the commands of its God...

How did I rationalize your call and heart away while serving within your church walls for so long?

 I, the professed, “hater” of all things watered down have apparently watered down Your very gospel in my own life. Forgive me. Oh Jesus, please forgive me.

So now I am a mess. It feels like a beautiful mess, but a mess none the less as I slowly, but surely try to unravel the threads of the American dream out of my life; out of our family’s life. It sounded so noble and normal and yet I find it extraordinarily base and empty now.

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

My dear hubby and I find ourselves re-thinking even the basics in the assumed rules of engagement for the American church.  This repetitive call from your Word is not to be saved for a few events peppered throughout the year, but weaved into the very fabric of our day to day lives.

There is a great blank canvas in our future now as You, oh Lord, wash the plans we had painted on it away. We find ourselves with baited breath and fervent prayers awaiting Your next brush stroke.

⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

Jesus you fill my heart with wonder and joy, but these come tinged with grief and remorse compared to where I was before.

So here I am. I am a mess for You. Yours for the taking and amazingly I discover that you chose me first a long time ago.

 I am not the last one picked for a game of kick ball, but your treasured pick because You have already chosen what you will do through my mess. You, who make all things beautiful.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.