My children love to watch a show called
“How It's Made” - if you've never seen it, it's a
mini-documentary series on . . . well, how things are made. Crayons,
bottle caps, chocolate, you name it – pretty interesting stuff,
even for grown-ups.
But of course the show makes it look
easy and quick – step 1, 2, 3 – Voila! Perfectly-finished
product. And while the terrifically-done editing makes for great
television, we grown-ups know that there are parts to the story that
aren't being shown. Broken machines, missed deadlines, occasional
confusion, quarterly loss postings, general piles of miscellaneous
dust.
And that's just it: manufacturing is
often – well, dusty. How many times have I prayed that God would
work in my spirit, change me, make something beautiful in my spirit?
So why do I get so frustrated when that changing process is – well,
dusty?
(Because life, unedited, is dusty,
too.)
I don't like chaos, I don't like
scrambling for Plan B (or C or D), I don't like uncertainty. But what
if those are the by-products of God's true work? Am I willing to look
beyond the chaos of several young children and see the reverse side
of that as the gift of a happy childhood? I want their rooms to be
clean, without my reminding them, and quick-like. But they persist in
making elaborate, time-consuming, chaos-inducing origami zoo
creatures as A Big Surprise for me. A gift of dearest devotion, when
all I truly wanted was for them to clean that room. Am I willing to
see the love behind the zoo creatures and look past the bomb-shell
bedroom?
When I go to sleep praying for peace,
and wake to heartache, might that be a part of God's work? When
friends have stumbled in life's pain and needed a strengthening arm,
my wish for words of comfort returned fruitless. But, slowly, I am
learning the Teachers of those words, the empty nights that prove the
reaches of God's love.
It is dusty.
I do not like the dust.
But, brokenly, I am grateful. I know
the Editor, and – eventually - the show is going to be good.
