God of my Grey...

Seems like we like to chop life into little bite size pieces...pretty little boxes that we can throw people and ideas into, slap a quick label on and move on... Seems like we're pretty dumb and shallow. Life is so much more complicated than the four letters that comprise the word or the action of the lungs to pull air in and push it out combined with the pump action of the heart to get blood to the right places to keep our physical bodies "living." Life is not a math problem, that, when divided by 2 yields "black" and "white." There are absolutes, to be sure, but most of the time, it's just not that simple, no matter our efforts to argue the contrary.

I especially find that I try to disect my relationship with God into these little boxes. "Black" boxes are the sins, the yucks, the admitable errors that I'll confess to saying shouldn't be in my life and when they are, I'm wrong and need to fix something. When I'm in the black, I'm out of line, have missed the mark, and KNOW it. "White" boxes are the obvious good things that I believe in - charity, love, praying, kindness, etc. The good absolutes upon which I build my foundation - belief in Jesus, caring for others, the Bible, etc. When I'm operating in this realm, it's ok, good things are happening.

But it's not so clear cut, is it? Nope, there's this other crafty, devious little sucker of a color in between my two label-able boxes and its name is "Grey." "Grey" represents all the "I don't knows," the questions, the uncertainties, the fears, the insecurities, the experiments, the unknowns. In the Grey are areas of life that I don't quite understand, that I'm not sure how I feel about them, that I'm not certain of what I believe, that I just don't know if it's wrong or right or relative. In the Grey, I've got to rely on hunches on and deductive reasoning to make my labeling decisions as to whether the items get pushed to the dark or light side of the spectrum. The problem with the Grey is that it's this vague no man's land...this relativistic realm wherein wrong and right are not clearly laid out and what's wrong with that? Well, it's like the old adage that you can't throw a frog in boiling (Black) water b/c it'll immediately jump out, BUT you can put it in lukewarm (Grey) water and slowly bring the heat up until boiling b/c you get comfortable in the lukewarm and the scalding hot sneaks up on ya!

Why am I rambling? Good question. Here's what I'm getting at. I think I put God in boxes. I say, "Ok, Lord, here are my Black items. I recognize these are wrong and I'm cool with you calling me out on it if I start messing with this box. I get it. It's not cool to mess with this box, would you please remove these elements from my life?" and then I say, "God, I've got this White box and in it are all the things I want to be and do for You in my life. It's all the character attributes that I want to emulate, it's the compassion I want to demonstrate; it's the beautiful concepts I want to contemplate...Will you help me become these things?" And I bring Him my two boxes, but then there's all this left over stuff on the floor - all the grey spill over and splashes - and I just leave that alone. I just let that stuff sit b/c I don't really know what to do with it, I don't really want to know what to do with it (it might cramp my style if I have to give up some of those things)...so I conveniently leave it out.

No.

I want Jesus to be Lord of my White and my Black boxes, but if He's to be sovereign in my life, then I need Him to be the God of my Grey too...