The Dirty Gospel

Welcome back to Lark & Bloom. Summer is over, and fall is here. I post several times a week, but on Tuesdays for the next 5 weeks I am doing a series on The Dirty Gospel. I am sharing my personal stories of how I found God in the midst of the hard situations in my life.

Gospel – the message concerning Christ, the kingdom of God, and salvation

Merriam-Webster dictionary

Some of you don’t believe in God at all. Others believe in Him, but find Him to be a complete failure and disappointment. Maybe you have had “God is good” thrown at you like a band-aid for your pain one to many times. Or maybe you are like me. Sitting in a world of chaos, asking Him to come closer.

I am not here to give answers to your questions, fight your arguments or convince myself of anything. I’m not a theologian, but I will tell you my stories of finding God in the mess.

Christianity is not a cherry on top, a one-liner when you can’t think of anything to say or a myth from an ancient religion.

I look around and I see a world on fire. Countries on the brink of war, economies collapsing, mass killings of innocents, petty arguments, my college friend dying of cancer… I know the world isn’t perfect. That is why I cling to this dirty Gospel.

Why is it dirty?

Because it has been through hundreds of wars, held the hand of the dying, wiped the tears of the orphan, and been stained by the blood of martyrs. It has been up to its elbows in the corruption of churches, the breakdown of families, the plagues and tragedies.

It gets face to face with sin. It is worn from generations clinging to it for hope. It has the fingerprints of the desperate all over it.

This Gospel didn’t sit by – out of reach- on some distant star, but rocked the children left homeless from bombings. Ached alongside the father who buried his last child. Walked into the empty house with a broken woman coming home for the first time since her divorce.

It has been persecuted in the worst ways. Evil men have tried to kill It, silence It, bury It.

No matter how dirty our hands, how sticky our situations or brutal our environments, this Gospel is for us.

Jesus was himself born into a genocide. He came right into the middle of the mess. Lived it. Felt it. Redeemed it. Won it.

He is in the middle of what is going on now. Jesus crawls down into our muddy pits and lifts us out. I won’t even try to explain why bad things happen. I don’t know why. But I know of a God who is tough enough to be with us in the midst of it. He is willing to get His hands dirty.