Tag: Organization

-Structure-

“Let all things be done decently and in order.” – 1 Corinthians 14:40, KJV

Even in the formless void, I was still there, looming in the darkness. Pressing on the people. Then He spoke and the good, binding part of me came to light. I was being formed, molded. This created, good side of me would carry throughout His creation, the intricacy and webs of creation, the essence of what was holding life.

But I bloomed into other things, into words. Words that were pure and good, but that people would use to their own advantage, for their own malicious ways. Everything that wasn’t true or pure or good. People’s flesh, their motives, working and holding and biding and judging. They had their plans, they knew what to expect. Or so they thought.

But then He came.

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this word, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” – Romans 12:2, NLT

I didn’t want to notice my neighbor’s structure. Not the physical structure of their house, but the structure in her life. But as the weeks turned into months of hearing a certain noise or having my yard get water from under their gate particular days of the week, I was forced to. They had their gardening day. They had the day of the week when they cleaned their car. Their day for vacuuming (townhouses with thin walls are fun).

And me? I go weeks without it. I love a clean house, but I hate cleaning. When I do, it’s one room, one cabinet, one car at a time. Everything comes out and I deep clean and organize so it’s perfect. Then leave it. For weeks. The necessities (dishes, laundry, floors, etc.) get done. But the rest? That goes by the wayside.

I’m busy. I have things to do. A schedule. Lists.

Lists. My life as been consumed by them lately. I found myself on a trip, on vacation, but still, somehow surrounded by multitudes of lists. It’s disturbing and I get frustrated with myself for it. I get overwhelmed. And when I try to relax on vacation, I still worry about the things that I need to do. The things that don’t have a checkmark by them on my oh-so-precious lists.

It’s good to have goals, it’s good to have dreams and things we need to accomplish. It’s good to work. It’s good to have structure, an order to things. A routine. I admire those with structure. I do all that I can to have more of it. My life is marred by lists that pile up of things I need to do. Of goals. Of what I shouldn’t be doing, what I should and shouldn’t be eating. It’s a never-ending, vicious circle that I need to get a grip on.

When we become so addicted to our goals, our structure, our lists of tasks we must accomplish, that we forget to rest, we’re only harming ourselves.

There’s a saying, ‘stop and smell the roses.’

Well, as I’ve gotten older, I have forgotten how.

It’s the dent in my façade. Because I want the plans, I want the structure and order. I want to do good, to handle things well. I want to be organized and for my life, my goals to go exactly how I would like them to.

Except, the list looms and hovers and when I don’t accomplish the goals and tasks I get so stressed out. I sin and fall short. And then if I don’t have a check mark next to the thing that I was supposed to do that day, when things aren’t done in the time I would like them to be; I feel like I’m failing not only myself, but Jesus. It’s a vicious, unpleasant cycle and I’m not a fan.

Then, when things work out and I’m working with others, and they fail. Or they change plans, or they don’t do things right or how it aligns with how I’d hoped, and I get stressed out.When things don’t go how they’re supposed to, when my goals aren’t accomplished in the time I had hoped, I get overwhelmed.

Did God truly set out for us to feel like failures? Does He get angry when our plans go awry and don’t work out?

Or does He want us to live sweetly broken, holy surrendered to Him? Trusting in Him? Knowing that He is our hope, our secure foundation, who will never leave us or forsake us?

That yes, He has laws, He wants us to Sabbath rest. But when life gets in the way (and life is great about getting in the way), we can’t let it destroy us to the point where we can’t catch our breath, we’re so stressed.

If God wanted us to be orderly robots bound by structure, He would have kept the animal sacrifices and the rules that cast people out and called them unclean. He would have honored the pharisees and Sadducees and built a palace as elegant as Solomon’s.

He wouldn’t have stepped down from His throne to be born in a manger – a feeding trough, of all things, for the Creator of the World. He wouldn’t have worked with His hands. He wouldn’t have called the tax collectors or healed the blind, deaf, lame and lepers. He would’ve turned His nose up at the little children. He wouldn’t have taken on the cross. He wouldn’t have shocked and dismayed the religious rule-abiders and welcomed the poor, the needy, sick and lame.

But Jesus came. And He broke down our walls, our plans, our structure – this box we so laid out for Him. He was real, He sought others so that they would know Him, that we might know Him. He didn’t come to be fed grapes and massaged with gold masks. He came to take our place, walk our steps, and have a relationship with us. To save us, in our broken ways with our cracked and faulty structures. To love us and let us know how completely and utterly and madly loved we are.

Everything He did was done carefully, orchestrated in Heaven and prophesied by prophets. But the way the Messiah came to fulfill the prophesies, the way He redeemed and healed, the way He saved the world transcended human structure and worldly expectation He came near for relationship, so that our anchor would not be in our structures, our rules, in our best laid plans. That our anchor would be Him, the Hope of Glory. The one who is the true Anchor. The Way, The Truth, The Life.

There were the pharisees. They were bound by the rules, bound by the law they so adamantly followed. Disciplined in everything they did, believing they knew exactly what was required of them.

They cast out the sick, the unclean. They despised the Romans but worked with them when people didn’t measure up to either of their standards. They punished those who broke the rules, especially those who broke the Sabbath.

They were uniform, knowing exactly how, what and when was expected of them all to please their God.

They believed in order, because He was the God who wrote the law. And surely, when He arrived, He would take Israel’s throne. He would come with pomp and circumstance and all of the prestige. He would defeat the ones who were holding them captive (Rome). Maybe He’d be a mighty warrior, and surely He would even have mighty warriors working for Him.

And they would be at His right hand, surely. Because they knew His law so well. Just as they were enforcing it today, they would enforce it alongside Him.

But then, He came. Him, with His unruly followers. He prophesied and He drew crowds by the thousands. He went to the houses of tax collectors to dine! He went to the demon possessed! He touched lepers! He talked to little children!

How dare He.

Then He dared to heal on the Sabbath. His disciples broke heads of grain and ate them on the Sabbath!

How dare they!

Then He claimed to be the Messiah. The Messiah!

How could He possibly be when He didn’t even uphold His own laws and regulations?

So the Pharisees and Sadducees joined forces. They even temporarily united with Rome to do away with this structure-breaker. This unruly Prophet.

They did all that they could to catch Him. They bribed. They schemed.

All believing that they were honoring the structure in which God had set out for them.

They even joined forces with Rome, condemning Him as a criminal, pushing Him toward the Roman’s way of punishment. Because that was the torture the unruly one deserved.

Thirty pieces of silver bought His betrayal, and they watched as He was scourged, the flesh torn off of Him. They were hurried, as He tripped over the wooden weight of the tree, He carried up Golgotha. They smirked as the nails went into His hands and feet.

And then, because Sabbath was fast approaching, they were quick and astute in making sure the other criminals were dead by breaking their legs. Because they had to be dead and taken care of so everyone else could observe Sabbath.

But this man, the structure-breaker, He seemed to have already given His last breath. And when the Roman guard pierced His side with a sword, blood and water hit the ground. Not one of His bones was broken.

Sabbath came and went and they ensured the tomb was sealed. But then, on Sunday, things started happening. Another sort of news began spreading, making them fear.

The unruly one, people were saying, had risen from the dead.

Which had to be a lie.

Except…the tomb was empty.

Even the structure of a tomb had been broken when the stone was rolled away.

What they didn’t realize, or, maybe – hopefully – some of them did, was that the Messiah came His own way. Because God, the Author of Eternity, isn’t bound by human structure or reasoning.

He’s not bound by our rules. He is The Way, The Truth and The Life. He knows those who are His. He is true love. And nothing is too hard, too difficult for Him. We say we know how things are supposed to go. We can uphold ourselves to the highest of standards, with our agenda books full, the list of tasks on our phones and all of our plans. But God.

“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” – Proverbs 16:9, NLT

We can make all of the plans we want, but when we surrender our lives to Jesus, we really need to be surrendered to Him.

We need to open our hearts, our minds to His will. We need to trust Him, for He makes all things work together for our good. We need to earnestly seek and pursue Him, because He is worthy.

Yes, He has rules and laws for a reason. Yes, the Ten Commandments should absolutely be upheld.

God created those to protect us, guide us and give us direction.

But He came here, He came near, in the most unexpected way so we might know Him. So that we could know relationship, and how precious He is. So that we can know that, no matter how outcast, unclean or broken we are we are not too outcast, unclean or broken for the Messiah.

We should have structure, we should set goals, but we need to remember Him first. We need to walk in love with Him, and be open to His still, small voice. We need to follow His Holy Spirit, which could be out gut, our instinct, when His voice says “do this or don’t do that.”

We need to remember to rest in Christ. To know Him. To seek Him first.

To break our own rules of structure and routine so we can be messy and surrendered to His perfect plan.

God didn’t create us to be robots, He created us to come to Him like little children. To trust and love their Daddy. To know that He is always guiding. To know that He is alive, the King of Kings, and He alone is worthy. There is nothing to hard for Him.

Structure is good, but when it pulls us away from enjoying God’s beauty, from enjoying His Sabbath, we need to surrender the walls of our structure to Him.

Jesus made a beautiful world with beautiful sunsets and beautiful roses for us to enjoy and see Him in it all.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believe sin Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” – John 3:16-17, NIV

Perhaps there was a hint of pride after his years of study, of holding onto what he knew was right.

The Promised One was not supposed to come this way.

The Messiah he had been praying for. The one he spent his life teaching about.

But there He was in front of him, humble. Answering his questions. He had kind eyes, a gentle yet deep voice. Yet He spoke with such authority and wisdom that it astounded him.

The things He said about their expectations, they didn’t make sense. But then… they did. It was if His very words had the power to open eyes and hearts. It became like a fire burning in his soul, hearing His words.

His life, his teachings had been a prisoner to structure, dedicated entirely to the law. He even assumed that that was Hashem’s will.

But the Man in front of Him – the Messiah – He wasn’t in a hurry to check off His to do list, to have a palace filled with gold and servants kissing His feet, attuned to every need. Instead, He was saying He came to serve. To save. To heal.

He wasn’t in a hurry to punish for lack of structure; He was in a hurry to break the bounds of structure, to show the world who He truly was.

John and the other disciples faded to the background, and Nicodemus let every word from his Savior soak in:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16, NKJV