Messy

The past few days have flown by fast and furious. There was a wedding I did for my neighbor, a serious elders meeting that was so heated that one elder told another elder to leave his house immediately, a serious and painful church discipline episode that was handled this morning after the morning service, and all this was followed by a couple in our church that informed me that their guest that they have been bringing out to church with them has been totally ignored the 3 Sundays she came! They later told me that she had called them up in tears claiming no one accepted her and that she would not be back to our fellowship! Needless to say it has certainly taken its toll on me and I am tired and ready for a good Sabbath rest tomorrow (or should I say today by the time I get this to my blog site). What has the Spirit been teaching me these past few days? Well, probably the most significant thing is the messiness of the christian life. Eugene Peterson once wrote that when we sin it makes our lives messy... and that would seem to me to be the sum of it. Messy. I'm certainly not a clean freak but I know a mess when I see one whether it is in my life or the life of another. There is so much pretending that goes on in our lives. We fake our way through so much I am not even sure we know what is really real at times. We put on the "I've got my life together" act whenever we are in church or when we are around others who we think will not accept us if they really knew how messy our lives were. It's not acceptable behavior to be messy by most standards and that really is a tragedy. I think Jesus was drawn to those who were messy and they had enough sense not to pretend otherwise. Folks who dug holes in other peoples roofs to lower down a friend in front of Jesus for healing or those who barge into dinner parties uninvited and begin weeping and wiping Jesus feet with their tear soaked hair. Messy, very messy indeed. The blind were messy and the sanitized religious leaders tried to keep them and their mess away from the "clean" Jesus. He hung around with cluttered tax collectors and messy prostitutes and messy men who he would later dub as his apostles. To often we sanitize our faith and it sends us into dark lonely cellars of sin. We hid there as often as we can rather than just being honest and plain and that usually means messed up! I guess the most important thing is to just admit the mess and keep on pursuing Jesus with a bit of desperation and lot of determination. Now that's messed up!