Perfect Imperfection

Ezra 7, 8
Luke 20

SOAP - Perfect Imperfection

Scripture
Ezra 7:27-28 Praise be to the Lord, the God of our fathers, who has put it into the King's heart to bring honor to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem in this way and who has extended his good favor to me before the king and his advisers and all the king's powerful officials. Because the hand of he Lord my God was on me, I took courage and gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.

Observation
This is the first point in the book of Ezra where Ezra speaks in first person. He gives thanks to God for working in the king's heart to help the people and he begins a personal account of bringing people of Israel to Jerusalem.

Application
Well, this morning I could tell that the document reviewer in me is at work even when I'm not at work. I was reading along and thought "first person? what? no, that can't be right." I was kinda proud that after having been reading books other than Ezra for a couple days, I could come back to it and realize something had changed. I was really excited when I looked in my study Bible and sure enough, Ezra suddenly changes from being a story he was writing, to being a first person account of returning to Jerusalem. If this was a document at work, it would be wrong. I'd make sure that all of it was written in the same tense. Suddenly changing to first person would be unacceptable, imperfect. But here it is, in the Bible! That's a pretty important book. And it works well here. You suddenly feel a kind of connection with Ezra. It's not just a story anymore, he was there, he was seeing God change the heart of a king and help his people. Technically, it's no perfect. But through God's work, it's absolutely perfect! I can be a quite a perfectionist. That comes in handy at work when someone wants their document to be "spotless". But it's not very useful day-to-day when I'm likely to avoid tasks or give up on things because I know they won't be "perfect". Just for the record, I usually have my own opinion of what "perfect" is, which might actually be far from perfect, but it's how I want it... selfish perfectionism maybe? Anyway... it can be hard to keep from stressing out and worrying about all the things around me that are all messed up. I need to keep in mind that God wants our love and our effort to serve him. He doesn't care if things come out "perfect" in the eyes of society. And he certainly doesn't care if things come out "perfect" in the eyes of Kristy. He'll make things perfect in his eyes and can use us no matter how imperfect we are. We'll never be perfect. That's not an excuse to not try. We should still do our best, but we can't let a desire to be perfect prevent us from getting the work done at all.

Prayer
Dear Lord. Thank you for using us and our efforts even when we make a mess of things. Thank you for your grace and forgiveness given to us when we fail. Thank you that you can take our imperfect love and still use it to love people and help them. Lord please bless our efforts to serve you and to serve one another. Amen.