When I walk outside my garage door, I look to my left and see—-what used to be a pretty deep pink dwarf crepe myrtle. Now what I see is a mess! There are weeds and vines that have grown up around and over the crepe myrtle.
You may be thinking that If I see the mess, why have I not pulled the weeds and cleared off the vines. Well, my answer is this! The vine that has taken over is a morning glory. When I go out early in the day, there are multiple blooms on the vine. Most of them are large pink ones, but some are smaller bluish-purple blossoms.
When I see in the afternoon what looks like a mess of green, in the mornings I choose to focus on seeing the beautiful blooms and the heart-shaped leaves. The bumble bees and the butterflies like to feed from the morning glory blossoms and the nearby lantana. They don’t seem to mind the mess around them. They find their way to the sweetness.
Recently I have noticed that many people use the word “mess” quite often.
I look a mess.
My hair is a mess.
My house is a mess.
God bless this mess.
I’m a mess.
I messed up,
They made a mess.
The world is in a mess.
You get the idea!
When we see, hear, or think about things that we call a mess, we have some choices. We can ignore them, complain about them, walk away from them, OR … we can try to fix the mess, which in some cases is easy and other times seemingly impossible. The options are different when it is our mess than when it is someone else’s. [I confess that I am a messy about some things!]
Recently I heard a minister describe a mess as “taking things out of God’s hands”. God is a God of order. He never has and never will make a mess of anything. We may not always understand the way (or the why) of His works in the world and in our lives, but we can trust that He knows what He is doing.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV)
