I’ve wanted to start writing for months.  A new house in Mennonite country meant setting up a home, establishing new routines for our growing family, and working to find an Internet provider in an area Comcast doesn’t serve. An exhausting winter pregnancy meant early bedtimes and spare time curled up on the couch napping rather than opening a laptop. And life with three children five and under is always an unpredictable adventure.

Sitting down to write was like facing a standoff with a close friend that you haven’t talked to in months for no reason at all. I’ve wanted to return to my writing with something I could be particularly proud of, something brave and insightful. I’ve had a wonderful year and a half– lots of growth, lots of God insight– but by the time I got around to writing, it seemed forced. I wanted the “perfect comeback,” and when it didn’t come, I didn’t write.

I appreciate the beauty of symmetry, order, design. Perfection. Regular rhythms. If I had my way, New Years Resolutions would stick, diets and fresh starts would always occur on Mondays, and my writing wouldn’t ever take an 18 month hiatus. Dishes wouldn’t ever sit in my sink, laundry would be folded right away. Forgiveness would be easy to extend, and receive. My sense of order and grace would never be infringed upon and I would always be able to see clear story lines and character arcs in life.

Instead, the world is full of the asymmetrical, the abstract, the amorphous. Hard grace.

Jesus is Lord over all.

The same God who set the stars on their path of exactness created the dusty explosion of the supernova. He made rhythmic sunrises and tides, but also powerful hurricanes that change course and bring nuclear strength destruction. He created the industrious ant and the slowest moving sloth. He crafted the human body with utmost precision and functionality, and yet children wake up at 4 AM some mornings and bodily functions overflow.

We say that God is a god of order. We envision Him appreciating patterns, establishing methodologies and exacting perfection. Overflowing with clean and neat grace from His throne in the sky. And we beat ourselves up when we are messy and imperfect, when we don’t have a plan and don’t know where to start.

Jesus is Lord over all.

The truth is that nowhere in His Word does it say that God is a god of order. Instead in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul tells us that “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33 NIV).  Emmanuel is there in the asymmetrical, the abstract, the amorphous. The imperfect, the unplanned. In the manger bed to the teen aged virgin. Drawing us to Himself as only He can. Speaking over us in love, and healing us with His wholeness.

The unexpected God incarnate tells us later at the table, “Peace I leave with you; My Peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27 ESV)  This peace, eiréné, God gives is not the circumstantial peace the world tries to coax us into.

Instead eirō is joined, tied together into a whole.  When we are “joined to the Lord” and in “one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:15 NLT), we need not feel peace, for we step into peace.

It is this eiréné-peace we embrace and offer to a world of hurt and suffering, discord and disorder.  To our hurting families, to broken marriages, to ends of friendships, to loss.  To infertility and uncertainty.  To war and violence.

God isn’t promising perfect circumstances or the certainty of order, but wholeness and unity.  Christ with us.  He is Lord.  In all, and over all and through all.  (Ephesians 4:6)  Amen.

Blessings.