Dear Friends,
I made a MESS the other day. Not a “I dropped a gallon of milk and had to mop the kitchen” kind of mess, or a “I splattered paint on my clothes while working on a project” mess. No, I made the sort of mess that depends on multiple mistakes… I cooked two cups of sesame seeds overnight in a slow cooker oatmeal recipe - with plums, coconut milk, brown sugar, the whole thing - instead of, y’know, oats.
Now, you may be asking what I was doing with two cups of sesame seeds, which is the question my wife’s boss asked her when she told him this story, but I cook a lot. I bake bread and make a lot of Korean food. That wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was that there were, in fact, a few steel cut oats in that jar. Because it used to be a jar of oats. Sometime, probably 18 months or more ago, in the course of a move, though, I put sesame seeds in the jar instead because all of it is small and brown and, well, my eyesight is pretty terrible.
If you’re not asking why I have this in my cabinet, then you may be, more reasonably, asking why I’m telling you about the absolute mess I made in the kitchen. This would be a very good question, and the answer isn’t just that I’m telling everyone about it (because it was ridiculous and because I successfully salvaged the mess).
I’m telling you about this mess that I made because I imagine God has felt a little bit like this about us, probably a lot more than once.
I think of Noah, of course, about how God was so disappointed by humanity, and about so many of the prophets, who, as the mouthpieces of God, struggled along - Jonah, running from his work because he could only see the mess ahead of him, and John the Baptist, a mess of a man himself, but always so enraptured by the world. I think of Jochebed, terrified for her son, yet finding a way to save him. Time and again, there seems to be a lot of mess before the miracle, all because God, through us, sees a way through.
My oatmeal mush is hardly a miracle - it’s a salvage, an attempt not to waste anything, plain and simple - but the words salvage and salvation share a root. God already knows we’re a mess. And, God doesn’t just let us carry on. God helps us become something more - God puts us to work.
One of my favorite Peder Eide songs, “As Is,” offers an account of how we are both loved and valued and called to serve with our own particular gifts -
So, what are your gifts? What is your ministry?
One thing I love about working with younger children is that they are far more certain about their skills, about what makes them special, than most adults are. We tend to spend a lot of our time feeling barely good enough, never mind actually great at anything, even though that isn’t true, which is why I encourage you to ask them - and to ask them how they can use the things they’re good at to help others. And, maybe you can even ask them what you’re good at, too. There’s nothing like a clear-eyed evaluation from a young person.
As for teenagers, let me tell you (as someone who still feels a little too close to my teenage identity for comfort), help them see their gifts. If they have already found a way in which they are actively reaching others, name that for them. My mother was the first person to identify my calling to children’s ministry, back when I was only 14 or 15 years old. Half a lifetime later, it’s still where my heart resides, and yet many adults struggle to feel anything they do is a ministry if they are not ordained or at least employed by the church. But it is. Even young children can mind a place of ministry, and many do so naturally.
The messes we make and even the messes we are - these things aren’t a surprise to God. It is, in fact, the only thing God has ever had to work with, which means we don’t get to give up.
This Sunday we’ll read the Beatitudes, but I want to add one more to the list:
Blessed are the Messes, for they will become the Miracles.
Amen,
A. Bird