Embraceable Inconsistencies

Embraceable Inconsistencies

I’m neat. Not compulsively neat, but orderly. I like things to make sense. Like when the conclusion of a good book somehow affirms its beginning. Or when I intuitively reach for something in the place it should be . . . and it’s there.

But while there’s comfort in finding things as you expected and where you expected, there’s also something a little thrilling about noticing the odd placements of life. Like spotting a single azalea blooming in my hedge more than a month after the thousands of others have faded and fallen. Or opening the newspaper and seeing that the predictable-as-rain sports section has been completely redesigned. Or discovering that my favorite neighborhood coffee shop has stopped making pistachio muffins and begun experimenting with cranberries.

Just when the routine becomes sweetly ordinary, God seems to specialize in shaking things up a bit. In a movie review I read recently, one of the actors was asked if the audience was meant to like his character—whether he was meant to be a “good” person or a “bad” one. He replied, “As an actor, I have always felt there is a risk in trying to reconcile everything about a character. You must embrace the inconsistencies.”

That last phrase intrigued me enough to tear out the paragraph surrounding it and leave the scrap of newsprint on my bedside table for later pondering. Embrace the inconsistencies.

Do you suppose a road closing could be an embraceable inconsistency? What about a harsh word from a normally gentle friend? Or a snowstorm in April or a last minute gate change at the airport?

And if I could learn to embrace the smaller, relatively painless inconsistencies in life, do you suppose I could ever learn to love the larger?

I hope so.

I’d like to embrace weakness so that strength can be showcased. I’d like to embrace emptiness so that fullness might be wildly celebrated. I’d like to do this because I’m the beneficiary of one of the most illogical, unpredictable, unexpected inconsistencies of all.

We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

2 Corinthians 4:7, ESV