There’s Beauty in the Messes
Last weekend my mom made some cinnamon rolls. Before putting them in the oven the pan was dropped and the cinnamon rolls got all twisted. She apologized so much. But somehow, seeing them in a not so ordinary state made them look even more appealing!
It’s hard to explain. We’ve all seen it. All been there, done that. We think things are in order but then seem to fall apart on us. We’ve got an ideal way in our minds which isn’t usually the way things turn out. The twists and turns are enough to drive us crazy, but there is a beauty to it all…
“Mack concentrated instead on staying to the walkway. As he rounded the trees, he saw for the first time a magnificent garden and orchard somehow contained within a plot of land hardly larger than an acre. For whatever reason, Mack had expected a perfectly manicured and ordered English garden. This was not that!
“It was chaos in color. His eyes tried unsuccessfully to find some order in this blatant disregard for certainty. Dazzling sprays of flowers were blasted through patches of randomly planted vegetables and herbs, vegetation the likes of which Mack had never seen. It was confusing, stunning, and incredibly beautiful.
“‘From above it’s a fractal,’ Sarayu said over her shoulder with an air of pleasure.
“‘A what?’ asked Mack absentmindedly, his mind still trying to grapple with and control the pandemonium of sight and the movements of hues and shades. Every step he took changed whatever patterns he for an instant thought he had seen, and nothing was like it had been.
“‘A fractal . . . something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex. I love fractals, so I put them everywhere.’
“‘Looks like a mess to me,’ muttered Mack under his breath.
“Sarayu stopped and turned to Mack, her face glorious. ‘Mack! Thank you! What a wonderful compliment!’ She looked around at the garden. ‘That is exactly what this is—a mess. But,’ she looked back at Mack and beamed, ‘it’s still a fractal, too.’”
Excerpt from The Shack, by William P. Young
Life is messy! A sopping, crowded, all-over-the-place kind of mess. I don’t think we’ll ever really be able to understand it. Sometimes we think in too much of a linear fashion. Straight path, front to back, the end. That’s not how it goes, though.
A book I read this summer, The Time Traveler’s Wife, caused me to realize how much in our lives is intertwined and comes full circle. The time traveler in the book lived a crazy life. There was himself in the present, and himself the time traveler. The author went back and forth between these scenes in his life. Yet by the end of the book all of the seemingly random events in his life made sense.
God somehow creates a divine order out of our messes. What we see as total chaos, the Lord sees as something beautiful and precious. Think of a small child who just woke up and their hair is tussled. It’s a precious thing. I think that’s how God views our lives. He’s got the order, the blueprint. All we need to do is trust and allow him to unravel things.
There are so many scenarios… A friend apologizing for the messiness of the house. Our own up-keep. But let us not get so caught up in appearances. Regardless of what’s going on, the most important thing to remember is…
God is ever in the process of untying our knots, ripping strongholds to shreds, removing our chains, and releasing us from the things that blind us to the Truth. It’s through this inner-working that we are made new creatures, alive and refreshed.
By the blood of the Lamb we are washed and made clean. By His grace we are enabled to simply trust. In the midst of whatever is going on we just need to trust that God has got it all under control.
And thank God for that.
Pause for a moment. Take a deep breath. Know that God’s got it all mapped out for you. Everything’s going to work out.
Keep going.
Your life is one of the most beautiful ever known.
