A Word from Pastor Nathan

Dear Friends,

We are halfway through our Lenten journey, which seems hard to believe. This season is passing quickly, and I have not yet caught my breath. Lent is a favorite liturgical season because it allows us to reflect intentionally on the messiness of our lives.

May I confess something to you? I am not a neat freak. My office desk is a case in point. Don ’t look at my car either. As all of you know, Chad and I have been moving into a house. Few things can convince you of how messy everything is like a move of one ’s possessions. When things are messy, I admit to maintaining a façade that convinces others that I have everything together.

Our spiritual life is not different from our routine life. Spirituality, as Mike Yaconelli says, is messy. To varying degrees, we come to church and sing hymns, participate in prayer, some of us teach and preach, even in spite of the messiness of our spiritual lives, of not having it together. Sin can contribute to the mess, too, even as we ’re pretty good at being inconsistent, wishy -washy, and unsure even without mistakes.

Yaconelli writes, “The way of the spiritual life begins where we are now in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God ’s being present in the mess of our unfixedness.”

Jesus loves a hot mess. Look at his disciples and at the people who sought him for healing and teaching. What if Jesus came not to call the well -mannered and perfect but the messy, temperamental, flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants humans who are neither tidy nor neat. Would the pressure of pretending finally fade so that we could be present with and to one another and God with unveiled faces?

We are halfway through our forty-day messy journey. But hear the good news: Jesus is with us, and he ’s not afraid of messy people. In fact, Jesus embraces us with outstretched arms wide enough to cover the mess. It ’s messy, true; it ’s also beautiful.

Peace be, beloveds,

Nathan