The first day of Spring has arrived, but I won’t discuss that, partly to avoid being cheesy and partly because I don’t believe that Winter is finally over. I’d rather talk about the messes my 11-year-old daughter makes and how much I enjoy them. Yes, that’s right, I enjoy the messes she makes. It’s a small price to pay to see her so excited when she puts together a recipe or creates a crafty project or concocts a ball of homemade “slime.” Since I’m the dad, her joy and sense of pride mean so much more to me than my desire to keep the kitchen clean for just five minutes please.

I wonder what God thinks of the messes I make as I attempt to please Him and live in relationship with Him. When I don’t know how to pray or what to pray for, does He still love that I’m talking to Him? When a friend has doubts about God and I fail in my attempts to answer, does He still take pleasure in my effort to represent Him? When I struggle to understand a passage of Scripture, does He still appreciate the time I spend listening to Him?

I’m going to say, “Yes” to all of these questions, not because of who I am, but because of who God is. As I’m reminded in Lamentations 3:22-23, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” I’m also going to say, “Yes” because God is my Father and while my wife and I have tried to raise our children, to paraphrase Glenn Procopio, “God has been raising us. As we’ve tried to fill our kids’ lives with the certainty of a love that would never end, He has been filling us with the same. As we’ve tried to delight in their successes, He has rejoiced in ours. As we sought to share their pain and cry with them when they were hurting, God was hurting with us.”