bibbidi, bobbidi, boo

I'm listening to my eldest trying to clean up the play room. She decided that she'd like to use all of her bins that hold her toys to make a train track, so she emptied them all out, creating a giant pile of toys in the corner. Naturally she was told that the toys promptly needed to find their way back to their respective bins.

After a few seconds of work, she appeared back out here. My prompt response: "Go back and clean up that playroom, missy." Her reply: "Bibbidi, bobbidi, boo." It took me a few seconds to understand that she actually believed she could clean up her mess with the magic phrase.

If only.

Sometimes I wish I had magic words that could fix all the messes I make, intentional or otherwise. Life is just flat out HARD sometimes (most days?), and I find that quite often my responses to the difficulty don't help much at all. They tend to make things even harder.

I've started a new book, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's For the Family's Sake, and a thought is really sticking with me: "Everyday ordinary life lived faithfully is where the glory of God is best reflected" (p. 30).

"Ordinary life lived faithfully." Does that mean I won't blow it? By no means...but it does mean I'm seeking to put my faith into practice, to practice the presence of God, to utilize the tools I've been given to live the abundant life that is only found in Christ. I really don't want to flounder and make messes, but it's part of being human, of being broken. But I don't have to give up, or live without hope, or wish for magic words to make everything better. Rather, I have to keep trusting, relying on the Holy Spirit to empower me to live a faithful life, to best reflect the glory of God. II Corinthians 4:7 says it this way: "But we have this treasure [the light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ, see verse 6] in clay jars, so that the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us" (italics mine). Again, it's not about me. It's about Him using ordinary earthen vessels like all of us to make Himself look good. Even in the midst of messes.

So wish all I might for magic words, they just aren't ever going to work. So I'm thankful I have a Father who watches over me, who encourages me to plod along, even in the messiest of times.