Engage the Mess

(Wrote this for a staff meeting devotional for my internship @ RP and thought I'd share- This is challenging my  heart today and everyday!!!!!!)


I remember flying over the Himalayas for the first time. Captivating. A massive expanse. Seemingly eternal ranges with peaks nearly parallel to my window seat on a small propeller plane. I marveled at it, breathless, speechless, lost for words… and then about two minutes later I had returned to my Sudoku puzzle, drifting in and out of sleep, unfazed, occasionally flipping through some pictures in my phone. A girl in my aisle who didn’t have the window seat leaned over and said, “I can’t believe we’re flying over the Himalayas and you’re playing Sudoku.” Embarrassed at first, I was actually shocked by my actions. How did I become indifferent so quickly? How did I go from such awe to such numbness where a Sudoku puzzle grasped my mind more than the divinely spoken Himalayas? 

 

I think this is the danger I so easily run into when it comes to engaging the mess. 

My own agenda seems more pressing. I am taken aback by the mess for a little while, then it no longer strikes me. Abortion seems bad when I’m watching Unplanned, then I stop praying against it. Human Trafficking seems like a big deal in Nepal, but I grow calloused to the headlines. Even the poverty, racial injustice, and heartbreaking circumstances in our own tiny town don’t really faze me long term.

 

I’ve been especially convicted by Dane Ortlund’s words in response to indifference. He says The purer a heart, the more it is naturally drawn out to help and relieve and protect and comfort, whereas a corrupt heart sits still, indifferent.

 

The fall has ruined me, all of me, including my emotions. Fallen emotions not only sinfully overreact; they also sinfully underreact.

 

 Our world is a mess, and every year I become a little more aware of that. In Mark 2:17, Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

 

So I’m fervently working to battle this sin of indifference. The times I choose to ignore injustice, to avoid conversations that might “weigh me down,” to flock to people that look like me and act like me, and to keep my bread to myself instead of sharing with the hungry.

 

I think the only way we can combat this is to fervently pray for hearts that choose to engage the mess, hearts that are pure enough to be naturally drawn to help and relieve. I’m praying for God to rid me of the corruptness in my heart that makes me indifferent. 

 

A verse that has been a helpful reminder for me in this idea of engaging the mess is Luke 12:48- to whom much has been entrusted, much will be required. It's time for me to get  up an act! To do something. I have been given much. I have to use it. If not us, then who?

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