If you’ve ever worked in a grocery store (I have; many, many moons ago!) you know what that dreaded overhead announcement means.
“Clean up on Aisle 7!”
Bring the mop and bucket, because someone just dropped a jar of pickles all over the floor.
Glass shards and smelly juice everywhere. Embarassment. Inconvenienced customers. And someone has to go out of their way to fix the mess.
Most days, I feel like my life is a continual cascade of pickle jars – and bread crumbs, and coffee grounds, and detergent, and milk – spilling all over every aisle imaginable. The volume of my own sin and folly – even after decades of walking with God – is disheartening.
Then I read, as I have this past week, of episodes where other Christians, and church leaders, spill their stuff all over aisle 2, and aisle 8, and aisle 15 – and it almost seems like one living, breathing mess. Scandal, hypocrisy, impurity – with no end in sight. And this isn’t unique to 2015 – it has always been thus. The struggle is real.
Yet Peter calls us to “keep (our) behavior excellent among the Gentiles.” We are to wage war against sin (not indulge it), so that the world sees our good works springing from a heart of holiness.
All this contradiction.
That is why we need God’s infinite grace, His undying patience. Because there will always be a mess on Aisle 7. And He has committed to cleaning it up – and fixing us up – through the sacrificial work of Jesus, and the steady, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
It is scandalous, this grace. How can God forgive murderers, adulterers, blasphemers, hypocrites, and backsliders? How can He keep putting up with all of my inward-scandals, my heart-sins, my disbelief; sweeping up glass shards day after day while slowly…oh so slowly…renewing me into His image?
What capacity to forgive – beyond anything we can begin to imagine!
There is only one conclusion – God is all-in on the messy work of giving new life to broken people. We’re all disasters, spilling stuff hourly and, many times, trying to hide the mess and deny that it was our doing.
Sometimes – often – I become discouraged by all the contradiction around me and inside me. But today, I must remember – God is up to the task. From the first pages of Genesis to right now, the human race, in sin, has been a colossal mess, and no believers have been exempt from dropping their pickles.
Let’s at least be honest before God and one another, about the reality of the brokenness we’re in. Brothers and sisters, pastors, and God Himself will be continually called to clean things up in Aisle ___ . Yet we also get to see His hand at work – patterns of sin broken, new light and life imparted, the image of Jesus steadily shining forth in each other, even in the chaos of a fallen world.
So let us rejoice, not in our attainments, but in His amazing capacity to love as a Father. All that stuff on Aisle 7? It’s meant to point us to the One who is perfect, and who will renew all things into His image. Even us.