Design · Culture · Spirituality

This Beautiful Mess – Chapter Six

Chapter six of This Beautiful Mess is a reminder that, although the kingdom is here, it’s around for us to join and live in, it’s also not here. There is a tension. There is a “not yet.”

Somehow Christians have a hard time saying things like, “I don’t know why the hell this is happening or how this will end. You guys must be scared to death.” I guess we all need to be able to explain life down to every last detail even when the answers don’t mean anything to us. We just can’t stand the questions. But in the kingdom of God, I have come to believe, it is all right not to have all the answers, and I think Jesus likes it even more when we don’t make up ones that are safe and easy but hollow.

I have been blessed with a faith community that gets this, and refuses to make up safe and easy, but hollow, answers. Does it make it easier that when we don’t know what’s going on, we know it’s ok? No. But it does give us the freedom for it not to be easy. To admit that it’s not easy. To ask the questions, and to be confused.

That kind of freedom, I think, is the only way to be authentic before God. To really know that God knows us, and not to be afraid of what he knows. Can you imagine being entirely known, and yet not being afraid of the one who knows you?

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About the Designer

Jonathan Stegall is a web designer and emergent / emerging follower of Jesus currently living in Atlanta, seeking to abide in the creative tension between theology, spirituality, design, and justice.

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