Lord, You see. You know how I’ve got a mess on my hands again. Seems these years are the wrecky years. The ones in which I try awful hard to scrub the grime, to pick up the piles, to sort through the stuff and to bring order back from chaos. It’s hard, though. Seems pointless. ‘Cause the next day, here I’ll be, doing it all over again.

But, I can hear You, Lord. I hear You say You’re present with me. Right in the middle of the muddled up mess. Neither a wrecky heart nor a wrecky house, frighten You away. Instead, You work with me to restore Shalom. That deepest, wholest peace. And I read how Your world was once right and good but sin entered in and wrecked up the place. And how, one day, Your Kingdom will come and there won’t be any more of that blasted law of entropy–all things always falling apart and scattering out of place. The curse will be cursed and You’ll restore order to this whole aching disheveled space.

 

And so all this picking up and all this cleaning up and all this shining up is more like a dance with You than anything. So, together we sing it–the song of all the redeemed. That Peace is coming. And aren’t You here, even now? Shalom is coming. God restoring all the broken and making it right again.

Yes, it’s more than a dance than anything. Laundry’s going. Dishes drying. Dust all wiped away. I’m redeeming this wrecked up place. Lord, as I pick up from the fall, I sing it with a certain, steady, hopeful voice. And every once in a while I look up from all the grime to catch a glimpse of Your Forever-light seeping through the corridors of a Kingdom on it’s way.