Crooked Sticks

A couple months ago, in the dead of winter while we were just hunkering down waiting for the sun and warmth of Spring to come back, the snow started to fall. It was thick, wet, and heavy as it started to pile up on the streets bringing our normal, every day to a screeching halt. It was officially a snow day! Sledding, snowball fights, and hot chocolate replaced the usual classrooms, meetings, and emails for several days. It was fun at first, until it wasn’t. As the beauty of the white snow on the roads turns to a dirty, icy hazard, the magic of the snow day fades as we all just wait for the sun to come out and melt the frozen boundaries that have kept us from normal life. A particular difficulty with an accumulation of snow is the damage it does to the trees that just aren’t used to holding that much weight. One tree in our backyard lost nearly all it’s limbs under the strain, and thankfully just missed our house as several large branches came crashing down. Just one more checkmark on my list of reasons we should be living on a tropical island somewhere, but that’s a whole other issue.

As the sun poked itself out through cracks in the gray skies, the snow eventually disappeared enough that I could go out back and start the clean up. I’ve spent hours out there cutting limbs and still have a mess of twisted up branches that need to be separated and cut just so I can haul them away. It’s interesting looking at my piles of branches, and I notice this to be true in nature…..nothing is straight. Not one branch or limb is perfectly straight. Walking the trails just outside of town, I’m surrounded by literally thousands of examples of the warp of the natural world. Winding streams, jagged mountains, and crooked sticks are everywhere. Looking deeper, I notice that both myself and every other human being I come across fit into this same category. We are twisted. We are broken and jagged. We are crooked.

That doesn’t feel very good to admit. If I’m honest with myself and with you, I’ll admit that I don’t really want to view myself as crooked. Typically in my life, and perhaps you are the same, I try to show my best self to the world. I want people to see the good in me and be blind to the bad. I want people to think I’m a good guy, and to see honesty and integrity in me. Well, what do you do when the façade is exposed and the world gets a glimpse behind your mask and realizes you’re just another broken, crooked stick? Is that it? Is that the new identity you carry for the rest of your days? In a recent conversation with my wife, I implied that in some ways that the failures of my own past define what I can and should do in the future. Her response was both direct and profound. “That’s a lie,” she said plainly. And you know what, she was right. Martin Luther once said that God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines. The truth is this: We’re all a little bit crooked. In our own natural state, we are flawed and twisted up versions of what we were intended to be. And yet, God somehow chooses to use crooked sticks. And we, recognizing our own failures and twisted up nature, are pulled into humility when we see God use the crooked limbs of our life to draw perfectly straight lines of grace and unconditional love. He doesn’t love us because we decided to be perfect little Christians that don’t eff up anymore. While we were yet sinners, before we gave two pence about God at all, he gave himself on our behalf.

Remembering this, the simple and profound truth that it never was and never will be my own “straightness” that qualifies me to be either loved or used by God, this is what brings humility and gratefulness to my soul. It’s in this place that I acknowledge my own brokenness, my crooked and selfish heart, and begin to scratch the surface of understanding the love of God who runs toward the brokenhearted, embraces the mud-soaked son who returns home hoping to just be a servant, and welcomes him as a son. I don’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve fallen down or walked away. Don’t live in shame of your crookedness, but know that as you surrender it to God he can and will bring beauty from your ashes. He will begin to use the brokenness of your own story to draw straight lines to show you that, in his hands, you are perfect. You are redeemed. You aren’t broken after all, but it’s your very crookedness that demonstrates God’s unconditional love for you.