Messy Flower

My beloved 5-year-old came running in the house after school, pulling at the zipper of his backpack before he even got in the door. “Mommy! I have something for you! I can’t wait till you see it!” As he pulled out the card he’d made for me in school that day, his face fell and his little eyes filled with tears. The card, decorated enthusiastically (and liberally) with glitter-glue, obviously hadn’t dried before he packed it away and his entire artistic effort was reduced to sparkly smears inside his backpack. Only a few glittery remnants remained and testified to the sparkling masterpiece it had once been. “I used the special-est blue they had and put on extra gold and a beautiful pink for you” he sniffed as he pointed out all the places it had once been painstakingly and lovingly decorated. “I worked so hard! But now…” his voice cracked as he held back tears. I held his smeared effort in one hand and hugged him close with the other. His disappointment broke my heart – he wanted to give me something special and his devastation at its destruction almost brought me to tears.

I feel like that with God sometimes. I know what I want to present to God. As a believer I want to be a constant “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), a beautiful example of Christ lived out in a real way, but so often my efforts amount to little more than a smeary mess, marred and often ruined by my failures. I can be selfish in my marriage, thoughtless in my friendships, inconsistent in my faith, and impatient with that precious little boy who wanted nothing more than to give me a beautiful card with the special-est blue glitter-glue he’d ever seen.

We’re in trouble when our faith – or our salvation – becomes more focused on our efforts than God’s grace.

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. 2 Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. Romans 5:1-2

Jesus has already done all of the work on the cross and nothing I do adds or subtracts from that. “Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege” (v. 2, emphasis added). Nothing we do makes us “worthy” of what Christ did for us, we are worthy because of HIS righteousness given to us by grace. God does not love me more or less because I was “good” or “bad” – I have “peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done.” God does not shake his head in disappointment and say “Failure! Try again!” to those of us who call Jesus Lord and Savior any more than I would have said those words to my sweet little boy that day.

Our efforts at godliness should be motivated not by a desire to gain God’s love and approval but rather by a heart of gratitude that, by His grace and Christ’s death, we already have it.

Catharine Phillips
Writer