Bless This Mess, I'm Not the One Who Made It!

PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart
Supplement to Chapter 5

Fallen leaves are a messy lot. Not the gussied up kind, flouncing fall colors and spinning through the air like little girls showing off their newest skirt till they collapse to the ground in a dizzy heap of laughter. No, not that kind. But the kind that are half melted on the patio, brown mush because it rained-sleeted-snowed on them and I can't rake them or sweep them because they'd just smear like mud. There's the fall, and there's fallen but, "Bless this mess, I'm not the one who made it!"

I try to keep it neat and organized; try to keep it together. Life, that is. And my kitchen. And the laundry room. And, uh, my closet. Well okay, and the entryway by the front door where I've placed a revolving shoe rack but the only shoes on it are the shoes that rarely see daylight or feel the ground beneath the sole or hug feet that'll take them for a walk. The other shoes gather at the foot of the stairs to gab about where they've been and what they've stepped in, and happily, they generally keep it to the wood floor.

Yeah, life happens and sometimes its real pretty and sometimes it's not.

Sometimes the daffodils bloom and never get snowed on because spring is organized.

Sometimes kitchen chairs break and the new chairs are half-way out of the boxes, half assembled, and half stacked between the dining room and the kitchen table.

Sometimes the blender lid pops off because I forget the law of heat expansion, or whatever it's called, that guarantees hot liquid will expand and when it's blending boiled kale, leeks, and potatoes on the puree setting it'll explode and soup preparations will stop because I'm standing on the kitchen counter wiping green from the ceiling and on down the cupboards while yellow therapy dog cleans the floor.

Thing is, life can't be contained any more than soup in a blender, though it's big business in this world of stuff to try. The Container Store comes to mind. And the coupons I get in the mail offering to professionally organize my closets. Only, the stuff I'd need to purchase to organize my stuff just would be more to stuff behind closet doors. And I'd really like to keep the doors. They're the best part of my closet. I get to close them; and frankly, I have other closet doors I like to keep shut because there's stuff behind them that I don't want to sort out. But somethings can't be shut in or shut out and kept together at the same time. They just can't. I've tried and all that happens is I get beaned by a skeleton.

Yeah, skeletons in the closet. Leave them there too long and they start rattling. I've heard my thoughts rattle. My insides can rattle till, well, the lid pops off and I'm cleaning up after my attitude. My nerves, too. They can rattle till I'm half-way contained, half-way assembled, half stacked between two places and the tipping point.

Yet, here's something. "Prophesy," God says, "to these bones, and say to them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord' (Ezekiel 37:6)."

Hear the word of the Lord. Hear the truth. Speak the truth. That's what it means to prophecy.

Prophecy the truth to skeletons and guess what? They stop rattling.

Speak God's word to dry bones, and they won't fit in the closet places anymore.

Prophecy the breath of life to them, and their first words will be words of life.

And here's something else. Somehow God's sovereignty is messy.

I think I make messes? Ha! My messes are spilt milk compared to the messes God makes. No, I don't make messes worth much more than a paper towel.

He makes messes; and I can't take the credit for messes anymore than I can take credit for the clean up. Yeah, I mess up; but  that's not the same thing as making messes. It's not. It's not, because didn't God make the mess of fallen-ness? Didn't God make the mess of sin? And didn't God know that I'd mess up and have skeletons rattling in my closet for these very reasons?

Maybe. May be that He did; because it may be that when I mess up He gets to spit-shine me and stand back with His mighty arms folded across His massive chest like Mr. Clean beaming on the detergent bottle.

Dafodiles

Connecting with God's Heart-

-Somehow He puts me together when I'm in pieces
-Somehow all things fit together in Him
-I'll mess up and that's okay because somehow it's part of His sovereignty
-I practicing prophecy and I'm not scared of skeletons

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig