How ironic that both my devotional reading and Scripture reading dealt with "messes." My office is a mess right now... I'm operating by the 'piles' system. When my space becomes disorganized like this I find myself becoming stressed. It usually takes me a solid day to get everything sorted, respond to what I need to respond to, and things put in their places. I ask myself how this happened, but I know how it happened... Part of it is due to being rushed, another part is due to procrastinating and being lazy. Finally my mess gets to a point that I can't ignore it any longer and the necessary work has to be done to clean up my mess.
There are similarities between the mess my office gets in and the messes of life. It never ceases to amaze me the messes people can get themselves into... including my own. Usually the messes in my life have been due to the same causes as my office; life moving along too fast, putting off what I know needs to be done in relationships, and just not wanting to put forth the effort because doing life can be hard work at times. Finally I get to the point of feeling overwhelmed and I stand back and gaze over what lies before me... what a mess!
My devotional reading had this to say, "[God] specializes in managing our messes to good and glorious outcomes. Thankfully, He is both capable and faithful. So, when your life is a mess, remember who your God is!"
To clean my office I've got to stop ignoring the mess, roll up my sleeves, turn up the music and simply start. There's not a whole lot of difference in cleaning up the messes in my life. But what I've found is that I can't just sweep things under the carpet. I must acknowledge my failure before God, many times I must seek godly counsel, and I must turn up God's praise. Happy Cleaning!
MEPASTORMIKE
