Cleaning after Messes

I look at the date of my last blog post and draw in a sharp breath...
almost a month since I let the scribbles in my journal fly free,
the words waltzing through my heart take off to be read,
the grace-flakes that fall slow and sweet and melt into my experience become glorious announcements.

But this morning the urges to continue a ministry where fruit is seldom seen commence... and what better way to serve a Savior who deserves all praise.

It is 5 a.m. in the dorm, though it is looking quite like midnight outside. I enter the common area and on the kitchen table lies a plate of gooey peanut butter cookies a quad-mate must have baked the night before, sweetness to share. How nice the thought arises in my head as I turn to the kitchen sink: my area to clean this week.

And the shudder is audible this time.

Erupting from the drain are the remnants of reject cookies, mushed into a clump, a spongy mashing of cookie crumbs and peanut butter junk, all ready for me to clean.

A stream of thoughts erupt inside my mind that I would be rather ashamed to write, but how the Lord humbles and how good is His voice when He catches his child running too close to the cliff of pessimism and hate.

It's not so different from you, child.

The analogy was a stretch at first as I prayed for the bitterness to be cleaved right out of the heart, scrubbing at the peanut-buttery mash.

And He reminds me of how good works can be.
 How we do these good, sweet things, like cookies on the table, good intentions, momentary selflessness, and God says, Well done.

What we don't realize is the mess we make with our nasty sin and our fear and our doubt--

but the Lord cleans the mess, looks at the cookies alone and still says two grace-words, Well done

And the fruit of His Spirit, that plate of cookies that isn't even our good work to begin with, why, it still lies there on the table, and the disastrous mess we are responsible is gone without a word.

Nothing like an ice cold realization like that to begin one's morning, to make you wish you could start anew when that opportunity to be like Christ is tainted with your initial bitterness.

But then He says, I've already cleaned it up. Well done.