First Lines: Messes

First Lines: Messes

by Griff Martin

October 24, 2017

Early on in our marriage there was a dish-washing disaster at the Martin house. During the course of the day, I had attempted to hand wash a dirty dish using liquid detergent. The dish did not really get clean, so I put it in the dishwasher, forgetting to thoroughly rinse off the liquid detergent. I ran the dishwasher.  That action led to a kitchen full of foam, suds, and dishwater. It looked like an I Love Lucy/ Married With Children type comedy episode. I mean, bubbly foamy matter was everywhere. Everywhere.

Upon finding the disaster (which was my fault and not the first time I’d been responsible for creating such a mess), I took a deep breath and considered my choices. My first reaction was to let go with a stream of words that, as one of my favorite pastors said, “would make Jesus blush.”  Or I figured I could laugh about it and start cleaning. I’ll be really honest, I wanted to let the stream of words go, but what good was that going to do? So I called Abby into the kitchen in my ‘honey don’t kill me - I love you more than life’ voice, made some jokes, and together we started mopping and toweling up the disaster. We ended up laughing a lot and in some weird way it was a fun thing for us to do together. 

Life presents us with a lot of messes. We don’t have a choice about that. Our kids call and they have been sent to the office because of something they said in class or because they are running a fever. Someone calls from back home to tell us that a good friend is really, really sick. We can’t make it to the end of the month on what is left in the budget. Our boss tells us that we might be transferred to another office in another city. One of our parents gets sick. Someone gets bored; someone cheats; someone gets divorced. It’s the messes of life and, let’s face it, they happen to all of us. 

They happen in Scripture, too. Rahab is a great example of this. Rahab was just going about her job, handling her business, when some prospective new clients showed up. They were not just any new clients, but were enemies who wanted to destroy her city.  And they wereon God’s side. She found herself in one of those messes of life. She did not ask for the mess, it was just suddenly thrust upon her, and she had to choose how to react. She thought about it, prayed on it, and chose to help the men save them if, in fact, they would promise not destroy her or her family. She took the situation that life handed her, found the best option, and followed that path. It’s not the situation she asked to be put in, nor the one she would have desired, but it is the situation life gave her. So she did what she could with it. 

I don’t know if you are in the middle of any messy situations right now, but I do know they come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are major and some are minor. What I hope is that you can find a way to get through them by reacting in the best possible way, so that maybe something good can come out of the mess. May you be willing to let your messes be messy, figure out how to get through them, then clean them up and see what comes of them. And never forget – we don’t have to clean up our messes alone. We have a God who will join us in the cleaning process.