The Messiness of Life

By Audrey Stallsmith

As I am cleaning up yet another cat mess, I often meditate on the messiness of life in general. Those people who claim that keeping pets improves your health may not be taking into account the aggravation involved! 

Of course, it always is one or two of the animals that seem to cause most of the problems. In our case, the worst is a big-eared tabby tomcat who seems to have some form of feline colitis. Then there is a tuxedoed female who appears to have been afflicted by what cat people vaguely call “failure to thrive.” She never grows much, and must be tempted to eat with canned cat food rather than the dry kind that all the other cats get. But she, at least, is a conscientious little thing and always uses the litter box. The tom tries to do the same, but often doesn’t make it that far.

Fortunately, those animals are two of my favorites. So I keep expending the extra effort on them even when it is expensive or time consuming or just downright disgusting.

Like I said, life can be messy—even with the things that are supposed to bring us the most pleasure. I plant lots of seeds indoors this time of year, using what we gardeners call “soilless mixes,” but what other people probably would call dirt! Due to their propensity to harbor mold, those mixes can aggravate my allergies as well as “hatching” the little seedlings which bring me much joy.

So we can conclude that live things always are untidy, and that is not only due to their generating wastes! Simply because they are unpredictable, plants, animals, and people are much more difficult to deal with than lifeless objects such as chairs, tables, etc. which don’t move unless we move them. 

Of course, nothing can be quite as messy as our interactions with other people. That was illustrated by the I Can Only Imagine movie, which revealed that one of the most well-known Christian songs was penned for the songwriter’s formerly abusive father. That relationship had been redeemed by the abuser’s conversion before his death, but we all know that such happy endings don’t always follow, even with family members who just are difficult rather than violent.

An elderly woman at our church tried frequently to reconnect with her estranged sister, but to no avail. So she didn’t even hear of that sibling’s death until a while after it had happened. The sister seems to have been a hard-to-get-along-with type who took offense at the smallest things. We had one of those among my own relatives too, who objected to my genealogist mother sending her photos of family ancestors, since she thought that pictures of people now dead were “morbid.”

I probably would have been tempted to respond that most of the people who ever lived are now dead. Deal with it! My mother was much more patient and continued to attempt to communicate with that cantankerous relative.

Mom probably knew that much of the messiness in relationships is caused by hurt pride. When I was at work the other night, one of the TV preachers to whom my patient listens was talking about that in reference to the first two brothers. Cain’s pride was lacerated because his offering wasn’t accepted while Abel's was. No doubt, that caused him to brood over the unfairness of God’s loving Abel best.

Not true, of course. Actually, as the parables of the lost lamb and of the prodigal son illustrate, God—like other worried parents—often seems to expend more effort on the straying than on the obedient. But that doesn’t prove that the unruly sheep are more loved, just that they require more attention. 

And, since Cain’s resentment would escalate to homicidal violence, he obviously needed help. I’m guessing that Abel’s offering really was an offering, a giving of one’s best out of adoration and gratitude, while Cain’s simply was a parading of his own accomplishments. A boast over what he had done rather than what God had done. And God knew that attitude was going to lead to trouble—as it has been doing for the rest of us ever since.

This article itself, has gotten a bit messy, since it seems to have two or three themes: messiness, pride, and favoritism. But part of life’s chaos is caused by the fact that pride can be a problem even for the obedient older brother who never leaves home, but accuses his father of loving the prodigal more. If Cain had listened to God’s counsel and Abel had lived, maybe Abel would have complained about all the extra attention Cain was getting! 

The aforementioned songwriter with the abusive parent could teach all of us a lesson about such quibbling. I’m sure that son would be happy to point out that those who have a good father—whether earthly or heavenly—are so lucky they would be idiots to fret about whom he loves best.

I didn’t hear the end of the Cain and Abel sermon because my patient turned it off. But I could guess where it was going. I’ve concluded that pride is not so much a chip on the shoulder as a large painful boil, which smarts whenever it’s bumped even lightly. The preacher probably was going to say that, if our pride gets hurt too frequently, it means we still have too much of it and some lancing might be in order.