Imperfection and Beauty

So, the song that's been running through my head today is the chorus from Anthem, by Leonard Cohen. Tim and the Vespers Music crew played four Leonard Cohen songs in the morning worship service on Sunday. They did an amazing job; I was really moved by the music. It was also my first Sunday back from maternity leave.

Here's the chorus (which, interestingly enough, Tim knew as a quote before he had heard the song):
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in.

I feel like this expresses, much better than I could, one of the things I love about ministry and people and the Christian faith. (Music can be so much more moving than prose.) It embraces the flaws in life, and the opportunities they offer for something greater.

One of the gifts of ministry is the way people can open their lives to one another, to allow each other to see them, cracks and all, rather than working to maintain the illusion of who they are supposed to be. It's all the "cracks,: those minor imperfections, and the way they struggle with them, that make people beautiful to me.
It's only when you really let your guard down and admit... dare I say confess?... to all the stuff that makes you less than you want to be, that you can be accepted just as you are, embraced, even forgiven. I think we call that grace.

And what I love about Christian faith in particular is that we capture this truth in the incarnation of Christ -- that God would take on the messiness and flaws and limitations of human living, to be with us, to sit next to us, to let us know that it's okay. We try and try to neaten things up, spiritually and otherwise, to get things right, but again and again we realize life is just messy -- but then in rare moments of clarity, we also realize that is what makes it beautiful.