Come As You Are

 There are no kids left at home to eat the ugly cupcakes or the broken cookies, so here I sit with a dozen chocolate cupcakes that got stuck to the pan. There's a meal at church tomorrow, and presentation matters, so I frosted and sprinkled the nice ones and packaged them up for the table. Then, I started contemplating the crooked and mangled leftovers. What have I taught my kids by leaving the "less than desirable" behind all of these years? What am I saying to my neighbors? Nothing good.

We like to put on our Sunday faces. We wear clean clothes, and make our best recipes, and nod and smile and paint rosy pictures of our lives for everyone to see. That's not what the world needs, they need us to be real. Church is meant for the crooked and mangled, the less desirable and the ugly.

In light of that, I have used extra buttercream to paste these cakes back together, and I squashed them together on a plate to keep them from falling apart. They will be right up front on the dessert table with everything else. When you see them, let them be a reminder that Jesus wants you to come to church in pieces. The church is the place where all of us can squash close enough together in the pan that we don't fall down.

This deep lesson is brought to you by Buttercream & Sprinkles Ministries (I made that up, don't try to Google the address lol)

"There's hope for the hopeless

And all those who've strayed

Come sit at the table

Come taste the grace

There's rest for the weary

Rest that endures

Earth has no sorrow

That heaven can't cure

So lay down your burdens

Lay down your shame

All who are broken

Lift up your face

Oh wanderer come home

You're not too far

Lay down your hurt lay down your heart

Come as you are

Come as you are"--Come As You Are (Crowder): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjgioXrnEME

Isaiah 53

 It's amazing what comes to mind years after the fact. 11th grade, I puked all over my desk and then sat there like "now what do I do?". You know, 11th grade, like "I can never come back to school ever again". Across the room was the kid with the reputation. Earrings, ripped t-shirt, chains hanging from his belt loops, labeled a "troublemaker". Anyway, didn't he get up and walk to the sink and bring a pile of paper towels right in the middle of the teacher's lecture. I will never forget him. In days when I struggle to find little bits of kindness in the world I remember that the person who was despised and rejected gave me the greatest gift that day.

What an amazing reminder of what Jesus does for all of us. We are covered in filth and stench and the people around us have turned the other way. But, Jesus.

Isaiah 53:2 "He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no stately form or majesty to attract us,

no beauty that we should desire Him.

3He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Like one from whom men hide their faces,

He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

4Surely He took on our infirmities

and carried our sorrows;.

5But He was pierced for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,

and by His stripes we are healed."

Stand Fast

 Exodus 13:17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”

18 So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.

When I think of the Israelites who fled Egypt I envision them as children. They were the complaining-est (yes, I know that's not a word) bunch ever. They were the kids in the back seat. "ARE WE THERE YET? I'M BORED. THERE'S NOTHING TO DRINK HERE. I'M HUNGRY." Personally, I would have found a babysitter and left the whole lot of them behind and spent a week at the Red Sea with my beach chair. But that's not God. He took the whiners and turned the car away from a shorter path in favor of the longer desert road. Why? He could see ahead. It wasn't safe physically and it was unsafe spiritually. "They might change their minds" and go back. They might lose the ground they'd gained with Him. He knew how fast they would forget. How fast we forget. Yesterday a miracle, today we're feeling unsure of God's presence and it's probably safer back there in the rear view mirror.

There are so many desert roads in this lifetime. SO. MANY. Hot barren days. Sand and dry wind in our eyes, we can barely see a way forward. This is not how we envisioned it, Lord, this is not what we thought following God's path would look like. Maybe it's not worth following you at all if it's going to end up like this.

We have the advantage of reading the rest of the Exodus story. We can see all the ways God took situations that looked absolutely impossible and made a way. We don't have that hindsight for our own lives, but I guarantee you if someone in the future reads your story that they, too, will marvel at the ways God brought you through.

Stand fast.

Galatians 5:1 1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.