Messes and Messages

I've noticed that, as a mother of three, I seem to just move from mess to mess throughout the day.  It starts with the breakfast dishes and doesn't really end till I go to bed.  What happened to my high school days when my entire bedroom was a mess, and you could barely make out a path from the door to my bed, and I loved that!  I didn't see a mess.  Didn't think twice about it, and once in awhile, I would get the urge to clean my room, and I did.  Now,  I love it when the house is clean!  It is my dream to clean my house thoroughly once a week with everyone helping, no interruptions.  Like I said, it is a dream! (I need to get a new dream!)  I stand with a load of barbies in my arms wondering why no one else seems to care about the mess I'm faced with.  Why do I have to ask these people over and over to clean up the same mess and to please put away what you took out.  Where do your shoes go?  What do we do when a bag of chips is empty?  Why are your clothes still sitting on the couch?  The same mess, the same requests, the same response:  Yes, mom!  I heard you.  Do I have to?  Why me? I think of Mrs. Brady who always had Alice by her side, cleaning up the messes in her blue uniform and white apron. Alice was the perfect housekeeper.  She was a live-in, she was always there to help the kids through their ups and downs, and always had a wise word for Carol and Mike. She  had cookies in the cookie jar and a glass of milk, a potroast in the oven, and you could always hear her whistle while she cleaned.   No wonder Carol Brady was always perfectly dressed, with a smile on, and  so calm all the time! Once in awhile I like to call God Alice. And when something comes up, I'll say Alice, what are we going to do about this mess?  And let's not forget Mrs. Claire Huxtable from the Cosby Show? Did you notice that her living room was always spotless?  Who cleaned up their mess?   When you have a baby everyone tells you to forget the house.  Let it be a mess.  Nothing else matters.  But sometimes, the mess does matter.  Sometimes you just want to walk by the fireplace mantel without sneezing because of the two inches of dust that haven't been disturbed since the last holiday.

Somehow the messes continue to get cleaned up, with or without help.  Once in awhile, I like to think of God as the Great Housekeeper.   I wonder how many times God has said the same thing about me.  There she goes again!  How many times is she going to make the same mess over and over again?  How many times do I have to help her clean the same mess up?  Relationships are all about making messes and then cleaning them up.  Whether you are a mom, a spouse, a daughter, a grandmother, a sister or a brother, an uncle or an aunt,  a friend or a stranger, life is all about making  messes, cleaning them up, and restoring order. 

When we arrive in this world, we arrive a mess.  We are not perfect bundles of pink.  There is a little blood involved,  our lungs need to be cleaned out, our eyes wiped, and all the stuff of birth needs to be washed away before we are wrapped in a receiving blanket and put into our mother's arms. And the mom who has just given birth is a little messy too.  And from that point on, our purpose in this world is about learning how to live and grow in a messed up world.  God has to tell us over and over again, the same message.  How many times do I have to say it?  Love each other as I have loved you!  And we get that for about a minute, or a day if I'm lucky, and then we make another mess of the same type and God has to tell us yet again Love each other as I have loved you.  The same messes in my house are made over and over again.  And I have to go through the same song and dance to get them cleaned up.  Life is not any different.  Everyday another opportunity arises to live with a clean heart.  Everyday we know we should love each other.  We know we have to forgive each other.  We know we have to live by the rules of compassion.  But just like a messy house, we are any combination of feeling rushed, pressured, lazy, exhausted, overworked, underpaid, and just plain done with it all.  And we'd rather put up with the mess than have to take the extra time and effort to clean it up. We have become used to the mess, and have convinced ourselves that messy is good!

All of us are faced with any number of messes in a lifetime.  Maybe your finances are in a mess.  We've all heard of messy divorces. We tackle the mess on our desks, and clean up the mess after the party.  Maybe your kids got themselves into a real mess at school on the playground.  I'll bet you've just recently been part of a conversation when someone has made the comment:  What a mess!  I'm glad its them and not me. Or my favorite, That girl is a hot mess! Life is really all about the messes,  either the messes we find ourselves in, or the ones we knowingly make.  Sometimes another person's mess becomes our mess, whether we like it or not.  The bible, from Genesis all the way to Revelations is full of our spiritual ancestors and their messes.  Think about it.  Adam and Eve made a real mess out of paradise.  One that some people would say we are still paying for.  Mary was in a real mess.  Pregnant with Jesus, and not married, was a real mess in those days.  Jesus made a mess in the temple when he threw over the money table.  He made a mess to prove a point. (That brings me so much comfort.  I've thrown legos!)  And then there's Moses.  Poor Moses.  Think of the mess God put in his hands!  A whole mess of people who did nothing but gripe and complain about being led from slavery into freedom.  God, in so many words said, I see the mess these people are in, and I need you to help me rescue them. I need you to help clean this up! Can't you just hear Moses say, Awwww! Do I have to?  Why can't Abraham do it? Isn't it someone else's turn?  Moses had inherited a real mess, and God promised to help him clean it up.  God is always the "Mr. Clean" in our lives. He has muscles, the golden earring in his ear, and the whiter than white T-shirt on. He puts all the elbow grease into our messes and we come out smelling lemon-fresh!  And, the real kicker, is that he's always ready to get out the pine sol again.  Never seems to tire of helping us clean up the messes we make. 

When God created us with the gift of free will, He had to have foreseen the mess we would make of our world.  When Olivia asks me if she can paint,  I take a deep breath.  Because I know that while she is busy creating a masterpiece, a mess is going to be made.  I know that, in reality, I'm going to be the one left to clean up and restore order.  But, I love her, and she loves to create and get real messy doing it.  Isn't that exactly like us?  Don't we love to create and have fun doing it?  Even if it means we might end up with a mess.  I stand by ready to hear from Olivia that she is finished and ready to move onto the next mess!  And I step in, hang her creation on our refrigerator, and clean up.  See what I made, Mom?  I hug her and she feels so proud of what she did.  And then when she offers to help me clean up, I cringe, because I know exactly what that will look like.  It is the same with Alice and me.  I create something everyday, and sometimes without awareness, I've made a mess when I didn't intend to make a mess at all.  But there Alice is, proud of me, loving me inspite of the mess, and always ready to clean it up, while I move on to the next mess. 

God's MESSengers love a good mess!  Messengers are those angels, saints,  prophets, and ordinary spiritual citizens who could foresee a mess about to happen, who would remind us about the mess of our past, or who had lived through a real mess to say, God rescued us yet again! Alleluia!  Think about the angel Gabriel who delivered one of the most important messages of our existence.  The message was this.  You are about to give birth to Jesus, the one who came to save us from our messy lives.  It was the message heard around the world.  A savior, the MESS-iah,  born unto us, in the mess of a manger, so that we might learn how to live Mess-Free!  

Everyday, how we choose to live our lives, sends a message to the rest of the world.  We are baptized messengers and we have a choice to be messengers of love or hate.  Messengers of fear or faith.  Messengers of life or death.  If you notice in  the word MESSAGE,  the word, sage is a part of that word, not by chance. A sage is considered to be a wise person, a holy person who has learned the lessons of love well.  A sage is nothing but a person of God who has heard the message, lives the message, and is aware of the mess, has lived through the mess,  and knows what it takes to get in the mess and help clean it up. 

I get tired of telling my kids to clean up their rooms, their shoes, their toys, their snack cups, their laundry, and their crayons and markers.  But day after day, I keep asking.  Because one day, they will get it!  Either that, or they will be making a mess in their own house!  Alleluia!  God keeps asking us to clean up our messes!  Please, people, don't make me be Alice again!  Please people, don't let another child go hungry.  Please, people, don't let another war happen!  You know how messy war is!  Please people, don't let me see another person die from a drive-by shooting!  Please people, don't use me as an excuse to plan another terrorist attack!  Surely, God must get tired of watching us make the same messes over and over again.  Surely, God must be weary of the mess we make out of our lives.  When will we get it? When will we clean up our lives without having to be asked over and over?  How much of a mess are we willing to put up with?  How many times are we going to walk by the same mess over and over again, leaving it for another day?  We keep asking for the fingerpaint, and God keeps standing by, ready to clean it up and restore order.... every day of our lives. When we get that we have created the mess, and we take responsibility for our part in the mess, and we can help others become aware of the mess, then we can start to clean it up together.   We all say we're tired of the mess our country is in, or we're tired of the mess our public school system is in, or we're tired of the messes in Syria, Yemen, and Iran. It is true we are in a global/religious mess. Some of the greatest acts of violence have been carried out because of our religious beliefs, which have added to the mess in our hearts and minds.  Religious traditions, beliefs, and doctrines have contributed to a  great percentage of our global mess. How tired do we have to be to start preventing the mess from happening in the first place? Messes are made by habits of the mind and heart that need changing. Create in us a clean heart, O God, and we will no longer live in a mess!  Messes are allowed to grow because we think change is just too hard, too complicated, and yes, too messy.  Every mess we find ourselves in has started in our hearts and minds.   We are entertained by people's messiness! There are plenty of television shows about cleaning up.  Shows about hoarding, buying old houses and flipping them, and extreme home makeovers  - you name it - just look at the "messes" people put up with and watch, and the people that come in and restore order. 

I can let the mess get to me, or I can become part of the Mary- Maid plan of action. Mary, Handmaiden of the Lord,  got involved in a mess, so that she could help the world get out of the mess of war, disease, hunger, and poverty.  She accepted her role in the world's mess, and she knew in her heart that the messes we, and the world find ourselves in, are not impossible for God to help us begin to clean up.  No mess is too big for God to help us clean up.  Inside every mess, is a message of Salvation. And it is this: Have you been saved from the mess in your heart and mind?  Salvation is all about, returning to Love, surrendering our messy lives to God, and allowing Love to clean our hearts and minds up.

A Prayer for My Mess

God of Messes and Messengers,

Examine the motives of my inmost being, and keep my mind and heart

free of messy thinking, messy habits, and messy beliefs.

Create in me a freshly polished heart that sparkles with love

and reflects your bright light and your brilliant clarity.

Whenever I find myself in a huge mess,

may my belief in your ability to restore order and peace in my life

be stronger than my belief that living in a messy, chaotic world is our lot in life.

I know the plans you have for me, God.

And it does not include having to suffer through our messiness.  Amen.

Reflect On Your Life

For we speak as messenger approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News.  Our purpose is to please God, not people.  He examines the motives of my heart.    1Thessalonians 2:4 

1.  How has God helped you through a past "mess"?  How did you feel about the outcome?

2.  What is your greatest fear about the mess(es) you face in the present?

3.  How can you become a part of the solution of the "global mess" that we are in?  What is one thing you can do to start to restore order in our universe?

Spiritual Challenge for the Week

  What are the mess(es) you face in your life? Write down every detail of your mess.  Ask God for guidance and clarity as to how to clean them up.  Write down what God says to you. Surrender your mess to God.