Take a brief moment out of your day today and look around at the people in your midst, particularly if you’re in a public place.

As you glance around, make an effort to look into each person’s inner being – in a non-creepy way, of course, because people get arrested for being creepy, and we certainly don’t want that.

But take a look.  What do you observe?

What I see is complex and conflicted human beings.

I’m guessing there’s no argument to me using the word complex, and I don’t mean to sound pessimistic when I say conflicted, so hear me out:  As humans, I would argue that we are walking paradoxes. 

Contained within each one of us is immense capability for good, coupled with an equal capacity for evil.

It’s why some parents can seem to love their kids in one moment, and then be borderline CPS-violators in the next.  It’s why some spouses say I Do and then have affairs years later.  It’s why politicians promise one thing and then do the opposite.  It’s why we swear to a healthy diet, but then grab ice cream on the way home.

We’re all conflicted.  An angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other, and they both often have compelling arguments as to why we should listen to them and not their counterpart.

So if we’re all just a bunch of internal messes walking down the street, capable of immeasurable evil against one another, what hope is there for humanity?  And maybe even more fundamental, how can we possibly act out of the good, when we haven’t yet purged the personal evil from within?

 

We’ve been going through a study at church lately that dives painfully deep into our various personality types.  It’s based on this thing called the Enneagram, where, rather than typecast our behaviors (such as a Meyers-Briggs survey), it typecasts our core motivations.

This isn’t the first time I’ve studied the Enneagram, but it is quickly becoming the most profound study of my personal makeup that I’ve ever encountered.

Each type, as would be expected, has its strong points and its weak points.  When healthy, we use our unique combination of strengths to make the world more beautiful, more efficient, more productive – we generally use our powers for good to make things around us better; we build.

When we act out of our unhealthy elements, we use those very same powers for evil; we defame, we deface, we impersonalize.  We tear down.

So how do we navigate our tendency to both build and destroy?

How do we make sense of a world filled with conflicted souls – people who have the same power to do good and to do evil, all wrapped up within the same person?

Or, better yet, how on earth do we use what we’ve been given to build, to be constructive, to offer the world a glimmer of hope and encouragement, when we’re nothing but a hot mess ourselves?

 

I had a moment last weekend at church.

It was a rare glimpse of awareness – an awareness that seemed to reveal the very picture above.  It was a room filled with a thousand conflicted souls – those same souls filled with the capacity for good and the capacity for evil, except that these souls were gathered together in one place for one singular purpose:  To worship God.

As I looked around the room, I noticed something profound as we were singing songs.  The people on stage?  I became suddenly aware that they were no holier than I was.  That they had their own struggles and issues that they were dealing with, just as I do.

The people raising their hands and singing in front of me?  Same deal – no holier than me, no more perfect that I am, no less screwed up.

Just.

Regular.

People.

Offering something very small from within, to a very large God who sees the very extent of their holiness as well as their mess.

What resulted was that the room, the one filled with a thousand messy people, suddenly became filled with a certain transcendence, a certain holiness, that ushered each and every one of us into the very presence of God.

It was as if, the united and collective efforts of a thousand broken people, offering up their very humble piece of God-breathed good in their lives, was gathered together by God himself; the collective sum of a thousand very small parts amounting to something deeply powerful, deeply meaningful, and deeply inspiring.

And I felt like my eyes were opened in that moment.

The goodness in the world can not, and does not, depend on me, or any one person.  It doesn’t depend on me getting my act together and becoming perfect before I can be used by God.  And it doesn’t for you, either.

I believe that all God needs is for us is to willingly offer that bit of our lives that does have it all together – our very little, if you will, and he can take it and combine it with someone else who is offering his very little, and combine that with yet another who is offering her very little, and the next thing you know, the world is becoming a better place.

Not because it’s filled with better people.

But because it’s filled with willing people. 

People who understand that God uses us – the collective us, in spite of ourselves, to bring hope, meaning, and inspiration to those around us. 

People who see that our very little has a real potential to literally change the world.

 

And so, as you practice offering up your very little, may your mess be blessed today…