This Beautiful Mess

I came upon a book that I read a few years ago.  The author is Rick McKinley the book is titled This Beautiful Mess.  I had made some notes about it at the time.  The thoughts seem timely to me.  Here are the thoughts.....

I have been trying to stay up with what I think a pastor's brain should be doing -trying to get smarter.  What if God just accepted me as I am? Is that enough? Have I been reading to be accepted by God or to find the approval of people?

 The Beautiful Mess says, – Stop trying to do everything….Stop trying to please everyone or at least stop worrying about it all.  The kingdom is here now, in me – in my kids.  How is God present in this ordinary, broken, goofed up life that I’m living now?

 You have to invest in people.  Give them your time. It’s time.  Page 56: “Spiritually we tend to think in levels too. Everything depends on what we do.”  Page 57: “He simply invited His followers to see it, embrace it, believe in the unfading reality of it – and join in what His Father was already doing in the world.”

There is something that I am fighting in my life – it is the notion that I have to keep doing something. What if the most spiritual people just rest in his love?  The kingdom just is.  Page 61: “It dawns on me that the weight of the climbing up levels just about killed me. For the first time in my life, I begin to sense the possibility of a new way to just be in the kingdom.”

 Every week the pastor says, “Go in peace”, but are we at peace?  What if we are so at peace that the kindness just flows from our life?

 Page 86: “Practicing the presence of the kingdom changes how we see the world, our neighbors, and ourselves. It changes the way we use money, understand children, and play in creation. It causes us to stop and listen, see, touch, taste, and feel. The kingdom is found in justice breaking in all around us, in beauty in the midst of the mess.”

You can’t be salt or light because you are trying. Jesus makes us salt and light. Relax. Then live.

Page 129: “This is a place to start: to wake up to the million mysteries that unfold in us and around us every day. Why are so many who call God Father passing their gift of days behind drawn shades? We must come alive. We must say with every breath and every act, “Look! The world!”