Love in All Seasons: Stepping into the Mess

After a winter boasting record snow falls, spring had finally sprung! Mud puddles had replaced snow drifts and the sunshine had returned after months of hazy gray. Instead of ice patches, our yard was now dotted with swamp-like pools of murk and mire. While I would have preferred green grass and budding tulips, Joshua was delighted with the transition from winter wonderland to mud-slopping hog heaven. Each day, my then-two-year-old son begged to explore the thawed earth just beyond our windows.

 

One morning as I tried frantically to clean the house in anticipation of company, Joshua followed me around with his mud boots in hand. “Honey, we can’t go outside this morning,” I tried to explain, “Mommy has work to do…” My words were lost in his whines and pleas. “As soon as I finish vacuuming, we’ll put your boots on, okay?” I promised before I planted my little boy in the middle of the playroom and headed to the adjacent room to clean the floors. Little did I know, my young adventurer was not up for a wait. While I lost myself in the hum of the vacuum, Joshua lost his patience and slipped out the back door in search of a mud-pie adventure.

 

Moments later, I glanced out the window in time to see five-year-old Hannah rushing towards a large puddle in her stocking feet. Befuddled by my preschooler’s rash behavior, I stepped outside to survey the scene. What I saw was a Kodak moment in the make (not a Hallmark moment, mind you… those “snapshots” are clean and rosy!). There in the middle of our “backyard swamp” was not just my daughter, but my small son as well. (Hadn’t I left him in the toy room surrounded by hot wheels cars?) Knee deep in mud, Hannah, was wading through the mire in a valiant effort to rescue her brother who had been nearly swallowed by the puddle.

“Don’t cry, Joshua,” Hannah crooned as she grabbed her brother’s pudgy hand and drug him to higher ground. By the time my Good Samaritan had trudged back to the house with her whining baby brother, both the rescued and the rescuer looked as if they’d been struck by chocolate chicken pox. Dots of brown decorated their once blonde hair, their delicate eyelashes and their rosy pink cheeks. However, a look of triumph framed Hannah’s spotted face. “Joshua is SO LUCKY to have a sister like me, isn’t he, Mom?”

 

My spotless floors didn’t last long once my mud-pie darlings raced across the house for the bathtub, but the lesson I learned that morning has endured. As my sister wisely reminded me earlier this week, sometimes love is messy! Love doesn’t mean standing by and simply feeling bad for someone who is “stuck in the mud.” Love steps in! It would have been easier for my young daughter (who hates to be dirty, by the way) to watch her floundering brother from the window and hope that someone else (perhaps her mom) would step into the mess; but love compelled her to get involved.

This is the fruit that our Savior displayed. He touched the untouchable; dined with the disreputable, and died for the irreconcilable. In the end, an almighty and perfect God stepped into our mud puddle of sin and death because His tender heart would not allow Him to merely stand by and watch us sink. Through the very hands and feet of His only Son, God got involved in our seemingly hopeless mess. Nails may have fastened Jesus to the cross, but love held Him there.