We make a mess making beautiful things.
God makes beautiful things out of our mess.
Valentine’s Day, the great “I love you” holiday, always creates a great big mess in our house. Gift bags and candy wrappers cover the kitchen table, while cards, stickers and stamps clutter the desk. Maybe love means never having to say you’re sorry . . . for the mess.
Sometimes it takes a mess just to say “I love you.” Knowing I enjoy a pretty backyard, my husband lovingly gifts me with a well-kept lawn . . . and a generous supply of leaves, dirt and diesel fumes. Knowing his passion for homemade birthday cakes, I willingly produce baking triumphs . . . and kitchen-wide disasters.
What do you love?
So many of our best-loved pastimes are just plain messy. Hunting. Fishing. Sports. (Think smelly gear and dirty laundry.) Gardening. Cooking. And any kind of craft. As a scrapbooker, my creativity knows no bounds; neither does the mess I make while scrapping. If I’m going to confine photos to a single page, I’m going to need plenty of room to spread out all those scrapbook supplies.
I heard somewhere “there’s a fine line between a hobby—and a mental illness.” When we create things we love, we create an insane amount of mess.
When my children were younger, they made fantastic structures entirely out of Legos, covering the entire carpet with the pieces. They built imaginary worlds of pirates, soldiers, superheroes—and destroyed their room in the process. And we secretly nicknamed our most artistic child a “mess with feet.” She spent hours decorating masterpieces with markers, paper, stickers and glue. I spent my days “un-decorating” the table and the floor.
Creativity is messy. But it’s also how we bring into being those things that we love. Consider that childbirth—an expression of love and the ultimate act of creation—is anything but tidy. The “miracle of birth” produces one miraculous mess.
Creativity is also a reflection of a loving Creator who fashioned us with love for love. He promises we can make room in our well-ordered lives for the messiness of love . . . if we will cover the mess with love.
Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures. I Corinthians 13: 7
Love endures the disorder that comes from serving each other.
Love doesn’t count the times no one cleaned up.
Love respects the process and rejoices in the product.
Love looks past the mess and sees the masterpiece.
After all, mess is temporary. Love lasts forever.
So these three things continue forever:
faith, hope, and love.
And the greatest of these is love.
– I Corinthians 13: 13
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