Since I was a preteen, my most spoken (and clung to) four-word phrase has been “I believe in miracles”. That was until the past few weeks when God has blessed me with an abundance of time caring for my five-year-old, three-and-a-half-year-old and three-year-old grandchildren. It dawned on me this evening, as this old grammy was corralling my two eldest grandbabies, that a new four-word phrase was challenging the mainstay phrase of my life’s journey.
The lightbulb went on as I spoke for the millionth time this week, “Clean up your mess”!! No more had I realized the magnitude of this repetition, when my soul heard God chuckle. Most all who have ever met me know my soul firmly believes God has a message in every single happening. We humans just get so preoccupied with the incident that we never look for its meaning. Not I. When I sensed God’s humor, I cut straight to the chase.
O.K. Lord, you’ve got my attention. So, could you please just enlighten me. He did. God’s perceived wisdom was this. The only thing a parent/grandparent does more than change a dirty diaper is to often advocate (O.K., more accurately dictate) that a child must clean up the mess of a dirty room. Seriously, think about it. All kids make one mess after the other, and we adults are continually requesting them to “clean up your mess”.
Soon as this thought crossed my mind, God shared His mind. Nothing changes with God’s kids – no matter what age they are. Yep, I’m speaking of me, you and everyone else, regardless of how young, old or in between we are. Left on our own, (just like my and your grandchildren) our lives make one mess after another. Sad thing is we no more want to clean up our messes than our youngsters do. Like little children, our instinct is to walk away from our messes and proceed on to the next mess of our making. Not a doubt in my mind, God is in the background asking us to “clean up our mess”; and we are as oblivious to His voice as our grandchildren are to ours. Ouch!! I was convicted.
God then took me from realization to revelation. My Heavenly Father sent His Son (my brother) to clean up the messes of my life. God didn’t tell Jesus to clean up HIS mess. He asked Him to clean up MY mess, and Christ didn’t ignore or argue with God. He did as asked. Why then am I unmindful that as a human being I mess up, but as a child of God I am called to clean up my mess. Just as I was asking my grandchildren to bend over, pick up and put back in its proper place the scattered pieces of their messes, shouldn’t I do the same for the messes in life I make?
Before ending His “clean up your mess” tutorial, God imparted one more piece of wisdom. It’s time for me to stop solely asking my grandbabies to “clean up your mess” and start “soul”y teaching them how Christ cleaned up the messes of mine, theirs and everyone’s sins; and God calls each and every one of us to imitate Christ as we journey through life. Simply and Biblically speaking, our messes are not to be ignored but restored.
Uplifted in a Broken Down World 