Life Is Messy

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

― Marilyn Monroe

Amen sister. As humans we say and do stupid things all the time...ALL THE TIME! We do them like its our job and we live in a world full of other humans who do the same stupid things!  Life is a stinkin' mess and there is no way to get around it. But why would you want too!? In my opinion our mistakes are what keep things interesting and help us learn. People may ask for a perfect world, and don't get me wrong there are some things that I could do without, but just imagine that. If everything was perfect all of the time no body would know what good or bad things even were. Perfect would be the new normal, normal would be all of the time, and who just wants normal? 

Even though its hard, we have to appreciate the bad just as much as the good because without the bad were couldn't savor the good. It would be a wasted wish to ask for nothing bad to ever happen again. Our bad experiences stay with us forever, sometimes even more than the good. They are so negative that we do everything in our power to prevent them for occurring again, right? When something bad happens have you ever caught yourself thinking, "Wow that was terrible! Can't wait to do it all over again." Probably not. And because of that right there, you learn a very valuable lesson. Experience is the best teacher because it is a brutal, relentless one. No body escapes it and it will play a huge part in shaping you into whoever you will be. We all know this scene from Disney's "The Lion King" (yes I'm throwing Disney in this! Like I said before...I LOVE Disney ;]): 

Now that is a very physical lesson learned, but metaphorically it meant a lot more. It basically sums it all up. You can either learn from your past or run from it, but either way you'll always remember it and it will change your future decisions and reactions.

The Mess and Heaven:

So as I was doing my devos the other day I was reading about Heaven. There is very little that is actually said in scripture about what Heaven will be like, but the little there is sounds amazing! All I know is that living with my Savior all of eternity will be perfect in every way! Then I got to thinking, life on Earth is terrible and corrupt and we just make the very best of what we can, but without seeing and experiencing such horrible things we wouldn't appreciate the place God has work so hard on creating for His children even half as much! If life was all sunshine and rainbows here, why go to Heaven? Why not just stay on Earth? Through every trail just remember, someday it will get better, way better. In fact, it will be perfect! All those bad experiences will someday cause you to enjoy Heaven that much more!

Trails Help Us Lean on God:

Alright, Pastor Cory literally JUST did a sermon on this and it was amazing! (I don't think it is posted yet but when it is it will be on rbcflint.org/sermons under set free and it will be February 17th's I believe). He said how there is a phrase that we all say that simple is just a lie. The phrase is: "God will never give you can't handle". He continued by saying how this is a complete lie because when we feel like we can handle things ourselves, we push God away. God purposely gives us tasks He knows are much to hard for us to handle on our own so we have no choice but to depend on Him to help us. Our dependency on God strengthens our relationship with Him making hard situations the ideal way to bring us close to Him. You see it isn't that God will never give us something that WE can't handle. It is that God will never give us something that we can't handle with HIM. And let me just say, there isn't anything the Creator, Savior, Great I Am, Prince of Peace, and King of Kings can't handle. He has earned those names for a reason! To sum it all up, trails are just a way for God to help us further our relationship with Him and when we come out of them, we will be stronger in our faith than when we went in. 

Life is messy, but it is the best kind of messy there is!