by Pastor Douglas Brauner

Experiencing Grace

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

The other day I was getting blue about the fact that leaves were about to fill the branches of trees. I know, I don’t think like other people. Ugh! I love looking at trees and shrubs when they are reduced to their skeletons, to their branches. Leaves, though beautiful, cover up the mess of branches weaving their way around the trunk. They keep us from seeing the hidden imperfections, the scabs and broken branches.

There is nothing hidden in the winter of a tree’s life. However, there is beauty in the mess.

This past year has seemed like one long winter. Our branches have been exposed for others to see and those branches might seem like an ugly mess.

But there’s beauty in the mess.

God’s grace reaches deep into the struggles of our lives. We might feel like we’ve come to know ourselves better than we would have liked to as we’ve dealt with this pandemic. We might see things in our relationships that cause us concern about how we treat people. All of this has been exposed not only to others or even to ourselves, but to the mercy of God in Christ.

As our messy lives have been exposed, we hear the words of Jesus,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28 English Standard Version

We cannot untangle the branches of our lives. We cannot undo the mistakes. There is only One who can redeem us, the One who carries our burdens for us. The beauty of our messy lives is not in the mess itself, but in what God’s grace does with the mess. May you see your life as a beautiful work of God even in the tangled mess.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado