Perfect Order

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Perfect order.

Your life, in perfect order.

Whenever I walk in the door to my house, I immediately begin to set things to right. I put everything where it should be. I wash dishes if there are any. I pick up garbage that has landed on the floor. I can’t be home, I can’t breathe a sigh of relief, until everything is in perfect order.

My home is never in perfect order.  Even though I try so hard, there are still piles of papers that need filed. There are carpets that always need vacuuming. The dust I just wiped away returns like some kind of mean joke. Truly, all my efforts to set things to right are really kind of an OCD exercise in futility.

Because life is incredibly, incessantly messy. The garbage just keeps on coming. Every day, new junk mail. New cereal spills. Those clear plastic wrappers from the straws on the juice boxes.

But something drives me to folding those throws and sweeping those stray popcorn kernels and wiping down those counter tops. It’s exhausting work, because it’s never done, and the over and over and over-ness of it makes me so weary I have to eventually sit down and surrender to the hopelessness of Ever. Really. Setting. Things. To. Right.

Someone told me my life is in perfect order when seeking God is my first priority. As long as I keep that one thing on the top of my to-do list, everything else will be in its rightful place, too.

Oh how I long to awaken early in the morning singing praises to my God. Oh how I long to fellowship with Him in silence, to be still and know He is God in my being before I embark on this endless, fruitless journey to put everything where it belongs.

Oh how I long to know and train my brain and body to know that nothing else matters. Christ is all. Everything. First.

That deep breath I breathe when I am exhausted with striving.  When I convince myself that life is manageable with enough effort.  When I scan my area and it is orderly for that moment.  That breath I breathe then…

Oh, let Jesus be the breath I breathe when the carpets teem with breakfast cereal and pizza crust crumbs, when I cannot make my way to my son’s bed to kiss him goodnight for all the toys strewn around it, when I arrive home to dishes not done, to dust making my furniture look white, to rings in bathtubs and toilets. Oh, let me breathe that breath of calm and of rejoicing and of thanksgiving in the very midst of life’s chaos, the breath of Jesus. The calm of Jesus. The joy of Jesus.

Let Him be first. Let Him be All.

Let my life be in perfect order, because God.

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