Chrysalis

God is not offended by our humanity.

When I first heard this sentence it amazed me.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised. 

I mean, honestly, life can be messy.  Life can be gross.  Life can be one big disappointment.

Its no wonder why childhood, in retrospect, seems so wonderful.  When we're that young and naive we are sheltered from most of the ugliness life has to give.  But as we grow older and wiser we become increasingly aware of life's difficult realities.  Such as the fact that we are all aging.  We are all terminal.  We will all experience health failures and we will all die. 

Period.  No exceptions.  Unless Jesus returns first.

Just this past weekend an uncle I love very dearly was rushed to the ER because of a ruptured appendix.  When the doctors opened him up they found gangrene in his colon and had to remove a significant amount of it to try and rid his body of the infection.

My uncle loves the Lord and has been faithful.  To learn that this terrible situation happened to him was quite a shock.  He's alive and fighting for his health, by God's grace.  

But his situation got me thinking about all the times I had been sick.  I'm sure my uncle is looking forward to feeling better and being able to care for his body on his own again.  Even something as simple as taking a shower is not possible for him right now.  He needs nurses to help him at the moment.

And then I began thinking about how God sees everything we do.  The Bible says that nothing is hidden from his eyes and that even the greatest darkness is as light to Him.  And this made me wonder how can such an amazing, beautiful, perfect God put up with us?

I mean even the prettiest human beings have ugliness.  We all need to use a bathroom.  We all need to shower.  We all get sick.  We all get old.  We all die.  And none of these things are pretty to watch. 

All this brings me back to my main thought in this post.

I heard a speaker on the radio the other day say that God is not offended by our humanity.  It doesn't matter to Him that our bodies fail us.  It doesn't matter that we can't be pretty and clean and healthy and strong all the time.  God remembers that we are just dust.

And suddenly I felt as if God had been speaking directly to me during that broadcast.  I needed to hear it.  I can never stop being human and I can't avoid the ugliness or messiness of life.  And I should never feel ashamed of the way God made me.  Although I know that's easier said than done for many of us.  I mean who doesn't have something about themselves they wish they could change!

But just as a caterpillar must first enter its chrysalis and spend time inside struggling, so we must live our lives right now as human beings.  We must struggle in order to emerge victoriously transformed.  And God promises to give us new bodies when the time comes.  

Imagine!  No more sickness, no more pain, no more disappointments.  But even better... no more messiness.   

It simply blows my mind.  God is so amazing!  Our ugliness doesn't turn Him away!  God even became a man, was born (definitely a messy event), and lived like us and then died a humiliating death on a cross!  

Why?

Because He loves you.  Because He loves me.  Because He sees us as worth it.  He sees what we will become... what we were meant to be.  

Life is messy but God knows that and promises to wade through the mess with us and help us emerge brilliantly, gloriously clean.  What an awesome God!