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God Is Not Afraid of Your Mess

    


         Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. (Psalm 51:4)

Abigail Maxina shared this meme, and it struck a chord with me. In some ways, it speaks to the issue of purity that I’ve been exploring. It even fits today’s verse. Our good Sunday School response to this is “Yes! Hurrah! Yippee! Thank You, God!” And it is a good response. We should consider it a good thing.

But there are a lot of buts involved. God may not be afraid of our messes, but we may be. If nothing else, God cleaning them up might be painful. I think of Eustace in The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. Then there’s the problem: while it’s a mess, it’s ours.  We’re used to it. Even if we don’t like it, we’re still uncomfortable having someone else come along and decide about it. If God would only ask our opinion about His plans for our mess each step, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. And since it’s our mess, saying, “Here Ya go, God, " feels irresponsible. Have at it!” Our egos don’t like feeling like a failure.

It takes desperation and/or courage to surrender our messes to God, and we don’t necessarily get our happily-ever-after, either quickly or even in our lifetimes. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t benefit from letting God handle our messes.

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