A Tangled Mess

                                        

We bought several of our granddaughters waterfall lights for Christmas. They are quite stunning when they are hung on the wall. Strings of fairy lights covering a span of about nine feet, hanging in multiple strings from the ceiling to the floor. With eight settings from steady, to twinkling, chasing, blinking to what I like to call seizure inducing chaos. They are dimmable, and absolutely what every girl from the age of 5 to 65 would love on her bedroom wall. One of our beautiful girls had the initiative to start the process herself. Sans the instructions. Which, having hung them previously in a client’s home which we were remodeling, I know to be a bad idea. And it was. A bad idea. 

She really thought she knew what she was doing, and to her credit she is a very bright child. And I am talking a pretty much guaranteed full ride scholarship smart child. But this got the best of her. When I walked into her bedroom and saw the mess on the floor my heart went out to her. We sat on the floor for over two hours and attempted to untangle the mess. She had disconnected the sections of lights before hanging them up and they just tangled up like a child with curly hair. And the more we tried to untangle, the worse it became. I gave up, but then my husband, never one to cry defeat, spent four hours himself on it. It was not to be. There was a process that had to have been followed, and it wasn’t. The result was a situation that no amount of our work was going to fix. So the unheard of happened. He gave up. Fortunately for her, we had a spare box, which we gave her to replace them. But the original lights were unusable. Or so it seemed.

I have an enormous cookie jar. And I mean E N O R M O U S. At one time in my life I actually put cookies in it, but that was when I had kids at home, teenagers in and out of my home as if through a revolving door, and a thriving youth ministry using our home as a base camp. Nowadays it is a Christmas decoration bonanza. Those 9 feet by 9 feet of fairy lights fit beautifully into that glass jar. It is beautiful. I will set it to twinkle at Christmas, dim it in the evening when the grandkids sleep in the living room as a night light, or use it as a reminder for what I am about to say.

God has a purpose for us. We were designed for it, and if we are careful to search His word and His will through His Spirit, He has instructions for us to follow. So often though, like my granddaughter, we leap ahead and start the process without Him. We may find ourselves with a tangled mess, unfit for the purpose for which we originally were designed. No matter how we work, where we tug, or push, or fight, it just doesn’t work. It happens to pretty much everyone, to some degree or another, at some point. How often it happens differs as well.  The impatience and excitement of youth will compel some to leap. Others, it is pride and arrogance that will create a pattern of blind rushing to action. It is what we do next that determines the outcome. 

Like the fairy lights, just because the original design may have to be abandoned, it does not mean that there is no use or purpose left at all. God makes beauty from ashes, and he made light from our tangled mess. Think about that. Your tangled mess can be light to someone else. But only if you allow Him to use it, if you take your hands off of it, step back and allow the one who created and designed it to put it to use in a way that allows others to see it.