God holds the high center, he sees and sets the world’s mess right. Psalm 9:7 (Message)

This Sunday we will think about the way Christmas happens in the midst of very messy situations. Clearly, God is not afraid of our mess and can work in spite of our messiness. Such is life. We crave order. We like to think in clearly defined categories like sacred and secular as if the two do not coexist, but most of life looks more like a muddle. The sacred is often cloaked in messiness, and messiness sometimes reveals the presence of God.

One such life that reveals this mixture is Dorothy Day. I encourage you to learn about her life if you aren’t familiar. Turning to God as a child and having a radical heart for the underdog, Day’s life became a mixture of social prophet, wanderer, and unlucky lover. Yet in the midst of seeming randomness, God appeared drawing closer to her, using her as a prophet for women’s rights and the poor.

In the book Almost Christian: A Wesleyan Advent Experience, Ingrid McIntyre shares a quote from Day:

Young people say, What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the fish and loaves.

Day discovered the power of God to use who we are as we do what we can, regardless of the messes we have experienced or faced. Sunday we will explore further God’s mission to enter the messiest places of our world and how God uses messy people to get there.

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