There was a point this summer when the mess in my office reached a totally unacceptable point. Not only was there the usual clutter: the stacks of papers, files, bibles, books, and post-its, but there were additional piles: old curriculum, donations of supplies, materials that hadn't been put away, receipts, first aid supplies, crafts, pictures. And then it got embarrassing: dirty dishes, empty water bottles, candy wrappers, forgotten lunches, and old candy. I had officially reached the status of Pig Sty.
It was so bad, that bless his sweet sweet heart, Albert, our Sexton, took it upon himself while I was away to organize my mess in to piles, to discard some of the more embarrassing items of trash, and to give my office a fresh feeling of newness. I really cannot thank him enough.
When I came to him to thank him for this kindness, he said, "Well, I figured you'd just gotten to a place where you were overwhelmed and couldn't keep up with it." It was so true. In Youth Ministry, you're liable to have things like toilet brushes, crayons, and Bibles tucked into every nook and cranny, and the fast pace of the summer makes it nearly impossible to keep up. But I had not done a great job of self-care and became easily overwhelmed with the items overflowing my office. It had come to a point that when I looked around, I wasn't even sure where to start, or how to make it right again.
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Maybe you know what I mean...
Maybe my office isn't all that far off from where a lot of us find ourselves. Maybe you also suffer from Messy-Desk-Syndrome, or maybe there is other mess and clutter in our lives.
Sometimes I wonder if I've made too many mistakes. Perhaps people will judge me solely on the errors I've made or the things I've dropped the ball on. Sometimes, I wonder if I've made a reputation that is so messy and so set in one way that it is too late to be changed.
Sometimes I am afraid. I'm afraid of violence and hatred I see on TV. I'm afraid of angry mobs and nuclear war. I am afraid of a world that is so different than the one I grew up in. I'm afraid of bullies, of people whose feelings have been hurt, of being wrong, and of accidentally hurting others. Sometimes, I'll admit, the fear I have in our ever-changing world feels like a mess I cannot begin to navigate. How can I make it through all this fear to the light on the other side?
Sometimes, when I was a teenager, I felt like people put me in a box. I was a band-geek, and an English nerd. I was a goody-two-shoes Christian. I was that girl who dated that weird guy who spread a bunch of rumors about her after they broke up. Sometimes I would wonder if anyone in my school would ever take the time to listen to me, to truly know me. Sometimes, my identity as a Middle or High School student felt like a mess I could not fix, a swamp of assumptions I could not escape.
The feeling of drowning in mess is not that foreign to us or to our teenagers, or perhaps even to our elementary aged children.
Starting Fresh
Yesterday morning on the Today's Show I saw a segment about the fashion trends for Back To School, which highlighted that white tennis shoes, fresh crisp and clean were all the rage for this year's Back to School Fashion.
The description and the pictures brought me back to a dewy morning standing at the bus stop with my new Converse All-Stars on the first day of Middle School. I wore my baggy jeans and baby-T shirt; my horrible haircut fixed as best I could behind a headband, my brand new red Jansport book bag on my back. I remember thinking that this new school was a fresh start: I could leave the past behind, make new friends, be a new person, and live new experiences. Even though that hope faded throughout the school year, there was a part of me that lived for that fresh new feeling of hope.
As Hoda Kotb described the crisp white tennis shoes, I thought both of the incredible blessing of a new school year and the harsh contrast it makes with the messy, scuffed up challenges of our everyday life. This week, our kids get a fresh start to make a new impression. They get to set a new trend for themselves in clothing; they redefine themselves (for better and sometimes worse) in terms of their personality; there are boundless opportunities for new friends, new classes, new schedules, and new lunch tables. The world is their oyster.
Our world doesn't give us a lot of light to guide us through the mess, and it is not a far leap to feel hopeless, especially at the age of 13. But our God does give us this hope. Our God does provide crisp white tennis shoes when the world around us is scuffed and gray. Our God does hear the cries of God's people; God does give us the light to see clearly through the fog. Our God does give us the real-life and metaphorical Alberts to come clean out our messy lives so we can start fresh.
This is the message we have heard from Jesus and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
-1 John 1.5-8
*****
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
-Romans 5.1-5
So as we prepare for a fresh new school year, I pray that together we would take this as an opportunity to renew our hope in a bright future, to renew our faith that Christ is near us, and to renew our sense of commitment to that hope, knowing that we are beloved children of God walking in the light, even when the shadows cling so closely.
*****
Our world doesn't give us a lot of light to guide us through the mess, and it is not a far leap to feel hopeless, especially at the age of 13. But our God does give us this hope. Our God does provide crisp white tennis shoes when the world around us is scuffed and gray. Our God does hear the cries of God's people; God does give us the light to see clearly through the fog. Our God does give us the real-life and metaphorical Alberts to come clean out our messy lives so we can start fresh.
This is the message we have heard from Jesus and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
-1 John 1.5-8
*****
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
-Romans 5.1-5
So as we prepare for a fresh new school year, I pray that together we would take this as an opportunity to renew our hope in a bright future, to renew our faith that Christ is near us, and to renew our sense of commitment to that hope, knowing that we are beloved children of God walking in the light, even when the shadows cling so closely.
*****
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