“People are messy; therefore, relationships will be messy. Don’t be surprised by messiness.” Tim Keller
We are a family–me, my husband, my children, and theirs. When my family was just me and young children, we were a beautiful mess of chaos and disorder that I constantly worked to organize. Managing five children often moving in five directions taught me that an ideal degree of order must by necessity contain some mess.
The messiness of life spills over into seven houses now with various degrees of order and chaos.
We are far from perfect. But perfection comes not in avoiding the mess–but in embracing the beauty of it.
It’s only human nature for us to want to give order to our lives and relationships. Order is a necessary component for growing children and reasonable sanity in adults.
But sometimes we are more of Martha–trying to make everything just so–and less of Mary–sitting at the feet of Jesus.
And sometimes our desire for order gets in the way of expanding our relationships to include those who are unlike ourselves–including many who yearn to sit as Mary did.
Each of us a small piece of the Church–the bigger family that engages in messy beauty on a larger scale.
We frustrate each other and disagree over how to do this and why we do that–even as we seek to sit at His feet.
When we look beyond our own ways to the beauty of Jesus, we become the beautiful mess that is the larger Church.
That beautiful mess is a picture of order to the world.
We are a family.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
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