A Little Messier

Nobody has ever been made a better person by having things handed to them. The only ones who have come out better on the other side of a gift are those who have known how to use it. 

That is, they've had to put in the work. 

I'm not saying that God needs our help; that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that God lets us help, the way a parent lets their child help even though they know it's going to take at least twice as long and be a whole lot messier. You know, when your dad hands you a hammer and there ends up being 400 little hammer marks in the wood around a nail that's kinda bent sideways and only halfway in. Or when your mom hands you a measuring cup but there's no way to measure how much flour ends up on the floor. (Or, because we're real about the world that we live in, maybe your mom hands you a hammer and your dad hands you a measuring cup. Whatever it is.) 

Because God is a Creator God, and we are created in His image. He wants us to create. He wants us to help in the work of building and re-building our world, restoring a little piece of it, putting one of broken parts back together, making a little wholeness wherever we can. And the only way to do that is to put the tools in our hands and let us miss a few times, make a few messes, take a bit longer. 

The world, it wants to just hand you a solution to the problems it sees. It wants you to just accept that it's done all the work for you and this is the way things are supposed to be now. But then, when things don't go to plan - because the world simply can't control everyone by force and make them comply - the world blames you for interfering, chastises you for making a mess, yells at you about taking too long, and then takes more of the control away from you and tries to hand you a smaller portion it thinks you can handle. 

Smaller and smaller until you have nothing, and then...it still isn't working. 

The world says it's better than God because it has the answers, but it would not accept the answers it's offering if they came from God. If God tried to dominate you the way the world does, the world would tell you that He's cruel, that He's not worth worshiping, that He's no "good God" at all. 

And yet, it's God's way that is the only way that has ever worked. 

It's God who has given the addict the tools, and the freedom to mess up along the way, that helps that addict lead other addicts to freedom. It's God who has given the grief to the mother with an empty womb, and all the time it takes for her to process that, that helps other mothers with empty wombs learn to cope with their loss. It's God who has given the lost a crayon with which to draw the map of the way out on whatever surface they can find, even though crayon can be a beast to get off a wall. 

It's God that has put this broken world in our hands and helped us to learn to re-create it with Him. To heal a little bit. To restore a few things. To make this world a better place. 

I don't know why those kids were shot while they were praying. In a church. 

But I know that something beautiful is going to come out of it. Something that the best of this world could never come up with...and something that the worst of this world can never stop. 

And I know that we join in that something beautiful with something beautiful that we already have right now - our prayer. That thing that connects us to our good, loving, gracious, beautiful Creator God who is patiently, tenderly, Father-ly teaching us to create - to recreate, to redeem, to restore - right along beside Him. 

Even though it takes a little longer and it's a little messier this way.

It's the only way. 

It's love.