Kindness in the Mess

Over the last few days, I have started reading through a devotional I received when my School of Worship and I got to sit in on a couple sessions at Bethel's WorthipU. The entry I read last night, written by Jessie Phillips, talked about when she started beekeeping to be able to harvest fresh honey from her backyard. She wrote about the first time she gathered a harvest of honey. She described the mess the honey made and the golden, gooey sweetness which got all over her. She then went on to describe the thoughts which began to draw parallels between sticky honey and God's kindness.

"When I look back at that moment, I see the Father showing me that His kindness is just like that honey. When I go to harvest his kindness, it is like liquid gold that covers me from head to toe, and my entire disposition changes. Instead of becoming anxious, I end up being a joyful participant- hands immersed in His goodness, totally drenched in joy. When I go to meet His kindness, I am always met by an abundance that fills up jar after jar in my heart. It's a kindness that never spoils- a kindness whose nutrients will carry me through winter."

At the end of each entry, a prompt is given as an encouragement to go deeper in time with the Lord and cultivate your time with him. At the end of this day, there was a prompt to get your hands dirty and seek the Lord in how he wants to meet you with kindness in that activity. My first instincts built a wall faster than most anything. "My life is already messy- I don't need to get my hands dirty in the real sense."

This morning I decided to bake some banana bread without a thought of last night. As I got some of the batter on my fingers, what I had read last night came to mind. I thought about the mess my life seems to me and realized how tangible the kindness of God is in my every day. Even on days when it seems all I think about are broken dreams and things which may never be, my life still drips with his kindness; filled with joy, covered in hope.

Every day, my life is saturated in reminders that God is good, even down to the unexpected song choice on Sunday morning when the worship team played King of My Heart (John Mark McMillan) and as always, the repeated bridge reminded me God is never going to let me down. Take a minute (or 7) and listen to this song. Think about the truth God is never going to let you down. Think about the truth of God as good, despite the bad faced around the world every day. Think about God's kindness in the messy. Think about God being the King of your heart and the beauty held within that.