When Life Gets Messy

“Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.  As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.” (Mark 2:13-14 NIV)

When we purchased our new home late last year, we knew it had drainage problems.  All the ground around the house is sloped toward the foundation.  Not a good thing.  The only solution is to re-grade, which means, literally, first creating a mess in order to fix things.  That work started this week and will get worse before it gets better, but, in the end, all the water will head in the proper direction.  Sometimes, you have to create a mess in order to solve a problem.  

I can imagine Levi (aka, Matthew) thinking he was doing okay, not great, but okay in life.  Tax collecting for the Romans wasn’t a respectable job, but it paid the bills.  Life could be better, but it could be a lot worse.  Then along comes Jesus.  “Leave your secure job and follow me.”  Suddenly, he is unemployed and on a journey to who knows where, following a guy who is intriguing for sure, but a little strange as well.  A lot of people love Him, but a lot of people also hate Him, which means they feel the same about you. What once was an imperfect but tidy life has become rather messy.

Jesus tore up Levi’s world.  He made a mess of it—in order to put it right.  What many don’t realize is that’s what Jesus does.  He upends our lives, like the excavator is upending our yard, in order to make it right.  And it starts out a mess.  Nothing is as it was.  What used to provide security no longer does.  What used to provide happiness fails to satisfy.  What propped us up in life has been removed. What the future clearly held becomes much more murky.  Life as we knew it before Jesus came onto the scene no longer exists.  It’s a mess.

But it doesn’t remain that way.  As Jesus exposes our weaknesses, insecurities, our rebellious hearts, He begins to heal us and make us right.  What began as a mess begins to take shape, the contours of our lives looking more and more as they were originally designed to be. However, it is not an easy or necessarily comfortable process, and it can take awhile.  But, as Levi later discovered, it is totally worth it in the end.  

Today, if you think following Jesus is making your life messier than you would like, be patient.  Like our yard, often life has to be upended to make it right.

© Jim Musser 2015