God's Perfect Mix-Tape

       During the later years of the 20^th century, there was a part of popular culture that still resounds well into the 21^st century. The concept of a mix tape was that you could take songs from your favorite artists and put them all in one place on a tape cassette. Often you would give someone the mix tape, as a gesture of romantic love or friendship that you just knew would stand the test of time. Anyone who thought they were someone growing up in the 1980’s and 90’s made mix tapes. With the dawn of CD’s mix tapes disappeared, soon it became burning a CD for someone, I’m pretty sure we’re to making playlists for people now to put on their iPod.

            Now I’ve been known to make a CD for a friend, putting the songs on there that remind me of them or thoughts that the song invokes that allows me to smile and reminisce over our shared memories. For me anyway, the song choice is important, the order that the songs are on the CD has to be perfect, the way the CD looks is important. The quest for the perfect mix tape is a quest that many people throughout the past half-century have journeyed, and it got me thinking about the road of faith. 

            We all want perfection; we want the perfect mix tape, the perfect marriage, the perfect friendship, the perfect job. We are so dead-set on perfection that we sometimes try to act more perfect than Jesus himself, the example of perfection we humans have. We forget how beautiful it is to be human.

            Beautiful humanity, those two words uttered together are becoming less common as time marches forward. We don’t equate beauty with imperfection; we need not look any further than our beauty or cosmetic advertisements that set a societal norm for perfection. However God, in a truly magnificent way, loves us with our beautiful imperfections.

            God came to this mess of a world to show us that even in our imperfection, God still wanted to join in the divine dance of the ages with us. It’s a reminder that we are beautiful in our flaws, our mishaps, and our chaos. I couldn’t think of a better way to go into these spring months as people who acknowledge our imperfections and strive to give voices to those who may be insecure with their humanity.

            Jason Mraz has a song that has lyrics such as these, “And through timeless words and priceless pictures, we’ll fly like birds not of this earth, and tides they turn and hearts disfigure. But that’s no concern when we’re wounded together, and we tore our dresses and stained our shirts. But it's nice today, oh, the wait was so worth it. And what a beautiful mess, yes it is, it’s like picking up trash in dresses.” Friends the God we serve is a God who gets down in the dirt with us and gives sight to those who are blind, may we rejoice that God accepts us for who we are.