4/27/2021 0 Comments God Says I'll embrace those flawsI was speaking to a youth group once. On a chalkboard I wrote the first year of every decade I've ever been alive.
0 10 20 30 40 50 Then I told them, if God gave me a magic eraser, and let me walk up to that chalkboard and erase the decade I most wanted to just disappear from my life - and then like magic everything associated that decade would poof into the air like it had never happened - oh, I told them - as I stood there erasing the number 20 - the decade of my twenties would be gone forever. So. Loooong. Gone.... But then, I told them, what I've come to learn is, that if God could put a great big smiley face - maybe a heart emoji or two - next to the decade on that chalkboard he wanted to most keep in my life, the decade he was going to work his own magic with, well he'd put that smiley face and those hearts right beside the number 20. Oh how God loves that decade of my twenties. I'm reminding myself of that this morning. As I sit here reflecting on another birthday, and looking back on my most recent trip around the sun, I'm tempted to look for that eraser again. This past year has been a tough one. But as I stand here poised to attack that chalkboard with my eraser, I can picture God standing there armed and ready with his smiley face and those heart emojis. He's thinking, haven't we been here before... I spent the decade of my twenties hiding from my flaws. Hiding behind them with unhealthy habits and hangups and addictions. And that whole time, God was in the background scooping them up, saying I'll embrace those. I'm going to build something out of those. I dare say that he did. Most of my work these days is built on that decade. Most of what I write comes from a heart that formed in that decade - it's the foundation of the compassion I try to have for every person. The more flaws you discover in your own life the easier it is to feel the pain of others wrestling with theirs. And there is this -most of my love for God comes from standing back on a daily basis and seeing how beautifully he re-wrote what I tried to erase. This past year was tough - but I think there's one thing that separates this past year from that decade of my twenties. This past year, I made a lot less effort to hide my flaws. In fact, in many cases, I just let them all hang out there. Maybe because of what I've learned looking back on that decade of my twenties, I'm trying to beat God to the punch. Instead of waiting for him to work a miracle out of flaws I'm trying to hide, I'm saying here they are God. This is me. I'm damaged and broken and flawed, but I know you've got some plan for that. Can I at least help you with it? This morning, in my prayer, my first words were thank you for another year. I said thank you for keeping that eraser out of my hand, and thank you for the smiley face and the hearts. Because I know on this first day of this next trip around the sun, just as sure as I'm sitting here writing, one day I'll be talking to a group of people and I'm going to tell them about a year in my life when I wanted to pull out the eraser. And God stopped me. He said oh no, this is good stuff, I'm going to embrace these flaws, we're going to build something beautiful out of this. I have no idea what that will be, only that it WILL be. Because that is who God has been in my life. He's been a God who has always loved me in the flaws. Given how difficult it is for us humans to love one another in each others' flaws, that makes God's love pretty special. Clearly one of a kind. It's a love that makes it easier to see the value in every number on the chalkboard. It makes it easier to want to keep writing, not erasing.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
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