Look around you. Everything you see came from the raw materials found in dirt.

You’re sitting on, living in, driving and eating a product of dirt.

When we look closely at dirt, we find many things: manure, air, moisture, dust, nutrients, hard things, rocks, minerals and resources.

To us, dirt is something we want to wash off straight away.  In its rawness, we often don’t see its potential or beauty. It’s just a pain and an inconvenience.

Dirt is messy.  Likewise, our world is not perfect and neither are our lives. They can be messy.

One thing we can count on this New Year is that dirt will appear in our lives.

Our first reaction will be to want to wash it off and get rid of it. But, let me encourage you, God can take our dirt, what we see as inconvenient, even painful, and make something beautiful with it.

In fact, consider this – humanity originated in the dirt!

The Bible in Genesis 2:7 says, “God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!”

Isaiah, a prophet of old, said we are like clay on the Potter’s wheel, in the Potter’s hand.

So, don’t be so quick to remove the dirt from your life before God gets a chance to show you His handiwork.

God can take our imperfect, messy and muddy lives and show His genius and masterpiece.

He is famous for making beauty out of ashes, creating life from dirt.

Corinthians. 4:7 says “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”

We are earthy and imperfect vessels carrying hope and God’s light to a messy world.

Our prayer this year, from the imperfect to the Perfect, may simply be, “Take this dirt and let it live, let it carry Your presence and breath Your excellence on it.”

You see, we all have cracks, we all have hard pieces and dead things in us. Dare I say, we all have smelly manure in our lives.  It is humanity’s common factor.

None of us are perfect. No matter how hard we try, we never will be.

If we allow others to see our imperfect lives, it may just be what God uses to let them see that God is not looking for perfection.

Allow your imperfections to be a means to connect with others who also know they are imperfect.

In doing so, we release the light of God through our lives. We could very well inspire faith in others. Our cracks could reveal the treasure of Jesus’ perfection and excellence within.

Something worth sharing.  Someone worth seeing.

Phil