Life Is Messy--God Is Good!

We celebrated Preschool Sunday this past Sunday at Northbrook. Worship was a little bit less “still and quiet.” There were a few more wiggles, giggles, and whispers. There were a few more baby cries and kids sitting in the aisles. There were a few extra pauses as we shuffled kids here and there.

Yet with all of that, we worshiped God together.

Worship with kids... and youth... and, let's face it, people in general, is messy. We are imperfect. We have different priorities. We have different expectations. We have different noise levels, wiggle-levels, and tolerance levels.

Here's what we have in common:
We love God.
God loves us.
God told us to love each other.

So, we do. We dive into the messiness. We adjust noise, wiggle, and tolerance levels as best we can. We learn each other’s names. We learn things about each other - our passions, our scars, our struggles, our talents. And the more we know each other, the easier it is to love each other - to look past differences and noise and expectations and see beloved children of God.

The picture above is of Saint Mark's, which I visited on a trip to Italy. This style caught my eye at almost every cathedral we visited. The building would look symmetrical and beautiful as a whole, but if you looked closely, every single section was different. It might be made of all kinds of different materials, different patterns, different pillar toppers, etc. At Saint Mark's, every single pillar was unique. One might even call it messy. All beautiful in their own right, all quite different. Their differences were drastic but never took away from the overall beauty. I think that's how God sees us. Each beautiful alone; somehow even better together.

That we might always find breath-taking beauty in the mess of our humanness - Lord, hear my prayer.

Leslie Bowers
Director of Creative Services