Last week my daughter was having chocolate cravings. She got home late, after work, and went on a mad search through the pantry for chocolate but, couldn’t find any. In one last attempt, she climbed up on the counter and looked into the cupboard where I keep my candy dishes. There she found a small crystal candy dish with a few M and M’s left from the party the night before. In her attempt to reach the M and M’s the dish crashed on the countertop and broke into a million little pieces. The following morning, I found a note that read, “Dear Mom, I got home late last night….was craving chocolate….so sorry about your candy dish. The mess was too big and I was too tired to clean it up.” Trust me, I was cleaning tiny glass pieces off the counter for the next few days. Next time, I’ll make the chocolate more available!

Sometimes the mess of our lives seems too big…..too overwhelming. We feel like going to bed and ignoring it all – hoping it will simply go away. God invites us to face our mess and bring it to His feet. We are all broken – some of us just hide it better than others. Why not be truthful? In Psalm 31:12 David writes, “I have become like broken pottery.”

I really believe that only broken people truly worship. Until we’ve embraced our brokenness we do not come to Jesus desperate and determined for only Him. Until that time, we may run from our brokenness or, try to fill our brokenness with other things. In the book of Jeremiah God says, “They have forsaken me the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13) Only after we realize our cisterns are broken do we come to Him as the only one who can truly satisfy our thirst.

And, our deep soul shattering is often the very thing that God uses the most. When we become like broken pottery, His light can shine through. So, face your mess – whatever it is. Don’t run from it, or ignore it, hoping it will go away. Bring it to the feet of the only one who can redeem and resurrect. It is often out of “our mess” that “our message” comes.