Wandering Through the Wreckage
How do we make sense of everything we face on a day-to-day basis? Over the past year, life has come at us fast and seemingly unrelenting. We have struggled to put our feelings into coherent or intelligent thoughts with one scene continually coming to my mind: an enormous pile of garbage covering every square inch of our lives.
Often times we sort through this garbage of our lives, organize our mess, and try to move forward only to have a second patch of garbage dumped in our laps and the process begins again. We have our moments where we sort and quite possibly even find a bit of treasure in the garbage but generally speaking, we just want to know when is it going to stop?
From here we tend to seek guidance of how to deal with the garbage in our lives. Our requests to our “friends” and to social media are met with hate and shameful comments. You are woefully reminded of the brokenness in this world and are no further along on your journey of sorting through the mess of life.
Just when we think things can’t work out, Ephesians 2:1-3 reminds us of who we were before Christ was in us. We were lifeless and we were wandering through the wreckage without direction or hope. This passage paints a picture of just how lost the world is without Jesus and why people might still be wandering today.
This Scripture says: 2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (ESV).
In our culture today, tempers are flaring, opinions are thrown around regardless of the pain they might bring to others. The mindset can be compared to “every man for himself.” Following this path will only cause more pain, division, and heartache. That can be seen every time we open Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
But God shows a better way. This way is revealed in Ephesians 2: 4-7 which says:
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the greatt love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (ESV).
If you’re struggling to find hope in the wreckage, remember the immeasurable riches of grace and kindness you have in Jesus Christ. He paid this price with His life because of His endless love for you! Our challenge is to live out God’s truth in a way that symbolizes stability and hope.
Each of us were created in His image and to glorify Him in all that we do, even in wandering through the wreckage of life. Will you trust Him and be a vessel of God’s peace and love in the midst of the chaos?