White Glue and Grace
For those of you finding yourself in a mess….
This afternoon I walked in on a glue mess. There was glue on the plastic craft table cloth, glue dripping down the front of the table, glue on the floor and on the wall. And there, in the middle of it, was my daughter, madly trying to scoop it up. Her hands were covered in goopy, sticky white glue, desperately trying to squeeze it into the small opening of the glue container.
She looked up at me, with scared eyes of being caught in the act, and said, “I’m trying, Mom. I’m trying so hard. I didn’t do this on purpose! ”
There was an easy explanation - the lid hadn’t been put on properly. But she didn’t know enough to know that. All she could see was a mess, even though she had tried so hard not to make one.
As we scooped the glue back into the bottle, I couldn’t help but think about those of us out there in the world thinking we should have it together. Believing that by now we should have it sorted and processed. That by this point there shouldn’t be things in our lives that make us feel like a scared little child. We should be able to buy houses without inherent problems. We should be able to just get it together without the help of God or friends.
And I want you to know that I see you, trying so hard to get through life without mistakes or problems or mess. I see you out there frustrated because you thought this time was going to be different. This time the forgiveness was going to stick. This time you wouldn’t look for other’s approval. This time you wouldn’t perform. You wouldn’t raise your voice, get into a power struggle with your teenager or an argument with your spouse. This time you were going to be a direct communicator.
This time it was going to be different. This time it was going to work. But it didn’t. It turned into a mess. You found yourself trying to scoop glue off of the proverbial craft table.
Those words, those perfectionism driven words are not the words of God. The voices of “push hard” and “never enough” are words straight from the pit of hell.
The words of God are words of compassion and grace. Words from Jesus are from someone who knows what it is like to be human, someone who lived it and walked and pitched his tent among us.
Psalm 145:8-9 says this:
“The Lord is gracious and merciful;
Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.
The Lord is good to all,
And His mercies are over all His works.”
This is who God is - in our messes and our incomplete selves.
We are often so quick to be angry with ourselves, lacking in grace and compassion, harbouring judgement and unforgiveness.
But not God.
When the apostle Paul was struggling with something he described as his “thorn in the flesh”, he heard these words from God. These are words for you and me too.
“ ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. " (2 Corinthians 2:9-10)
The grace God extends to us in our messes might be the most impactful witness we will have to a broken world. His grace is a grace that doesn’t make sense, it is not reliant on us to do anything. His grace is never ending, abounds, is in abundance. There is no logic to it, there is no ledger. God’s grace is not unkind or brash but humble and loving. And this grace extends to you in all your gluey messes - whether big or small.
Let this be your daily, every minute of every second reminder of God’s character, the one you need to tune into when you realize things are not going the way you want, that the glue has spilled all over the table and you don’t know where to start.
God asks us to be holy but not perfect. He asks us to be set apart for his purposes but we cannot achieve perfection on our own. Only in our weaknesses is his power made perfect. Only in our messes.
The older I get, the more I am aware that any love or grace I need for myself and others cannot be found apart from him and His spirit. I still try and find it in other places but I always have to come back to the source.
The next time you find yourself with glue dripping everywhere, madly scooping it up off the table, defeated in your own efforts to be put together - remember the grace of Jesus.
The messes will always be there. But there is grace and strength in Jesus - our ever- present help in times of trouble, our shelter and high tower. There is grace enough for you and for me, new and fresh every morning, never ending and everlasting in kindness.
It makes me thankful for the Father who through Jesus by his Holy Spirit has covered us with his grace and that is what is shaping us and forming and transforming so that one day we shall see him as He is, in all his glory. This is His true and ultimate grace to us.
May his grace be yours today and may it be mine.
Recipes I am currently enjoying:
For a simple and tasty granola recipe try this Healthy Granola by Cookie and Kate .
*I add more cinnamon than is called for here - just shake that cinnamon until it smells cinnamon-y.
Books I am currently reading:
God Has A Name by John Mark Comer - In Exodus 34 we find one of the most important verses tucked away. It is the most quoted verse in the bible - Psalm 145 above is one example. Learning God’s name will take you deeper into relationship with him and John Mark Comer does a great job as a guide on that journey.
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - I often find that books about writing are quite often just good books about life. This is true of this book.
Shows I am currently watching:
All Creatures Great and Small by PBS (the new version)
If you love clean, wonderful shows with heartwarming characters and animals with the backdrop of beautiful Yorkshire - this show is for you. We recently took this out of the library because someone in our home was reading the books and it has been such a great way to end our days as a family.