It is that thing that pretty much all of us hate.

It’s what we would rather run from than run straight into.

It’s what makes us speak accusations instead of affirmations.

It’s what drives us bat crazy, feeling like we are chasing a shifting shadows of ever-changing goals and needs.

It’s what sends us to mindsets of sin rather than pastures of holiness.

IT IS CALLED CONFLICT

It is that thing that we don’t know why, we as Christians have to deal with – yet, we do. Somehow and sometimes, we just hit it. And as ugly as it is, we often stand, right in the midst of it, wondering how something so icky, so yucky and so unsavoury, could exist in one who is trying to pursue God so wholly?

How a God-seeker could turn into more of a raging lunatic than a calming saint?

How this very growth of mould could threaten to swallow God’s very light shining on it?

But, yet, if we stop and think, sometimes our heart actually lands at the truth, doesn’t it?

God’s light is still shining – even when our heart isn’t.

There is no amount of disgrace, shame and darkness that can remove the ray of light shining on you. Like the rays that follow your tin can of transport, so does God go. Like the light that reflect off the tiny pieces of dirt on the side of the road, so does God go. Like the moon that shines even in the darkness, so does God go.  You can’t stop the places his light shine.

God’s light shines hope into every endless pit of death and decay – it can’t help but make things grow.

The glow of repair is always available – and the glow is a He and he waits for our call, so that he can run to our rescue, operating tools and all, to reshape us into glory, faster than one can mutter “Thank you.”

God didn’t save his glow for the perfect, He shines it on the sinners.

The only hindrance for us receiving it, is us believing dirty rotten scoundrels can really handle it without ruining everything.

It is moving in, rather than running away.

It is waiting, rather than hiding.

It is believing grace rather than fear.

It is relaxing into his work, rather than resisting it.

Conflict is the great body shop of God’s repair, for it is here that he points out the greatest defects of our hearts. The amazing part is – when those who are defected, continually run to him who is resurrected, we can’t help but find ourselves more and more perfected.

Therefore: