I took the girls to donuts this morning and at Slivinsky’s they asked for a Princess Ivy and Princess Phoebe story. In this installment the girls were in the courtyard of their impressive castle bouncing a ball back and forth. With each bounce pass the ball changed colors. Blue… bounce… red… bounce… yellow… Then bounce and boom. Colors burst out of the ball. But the world was not covered in paint splatter. Instead wherever the colors from the ball hit the color was changed. Red hit the grass and the green became red. Purple hit the white castle and it became purple. The sky became yellow. The clouds green. The girls outfits went from purple and pink to orange. King daddy found himself all in brown rather than Royal blue…

To make a long story short – my telling rushed to finish as we dropped Ivy at Dogwood Elementary – the girls had to the take the deflated ball and journey to the Color Wizard. Through the dark forest they came to his office (he works at a factory). The receptionist showed them to the door, which opened to a long hallway. The walls of the hallway were covered with every color imagined. And as the girls walked they discovered why. The orange of their clothes was slowly pulled out – splattering against the walls. Soon their garments were  pure white. When the hallway ended they pushed open the doors and entered an office devoid of color. Everything was perfectly white. Without any changes in color it was difficult to discern the objects in the room. But their eyes were pulled to the sound of a typing keyboard. And there, clothes and hair bleached as everything else, sat the wizard…

Do you ever feel that this is trip we make to church?? A journey to cover up all our worries and brokenness. So that when we arrive we can join the crowd in our pure white gowns. Finally prepared to worship… 

Last night Meg spoke to our neighbor – the one I wrote about a few weeks ago. No not the garden hater, but the one with birds building a nest inside their grill. Anyway, she told Megan she was a new grandmother. Meg was surprised (knowing her college and teenage sons), but muttered congratulations. Then our neighbor explained. That day when she was checking on her birds, five of the six eggs had hatched! Of course I was suprised. As I wrote in my blog – I assumed she (or her husband) would remove the problem. But instead they celebrated the problem and found new life.

This is the Christ we approach. He does not drain the color form our lives. Instead he redeems our brokenness. He heals our sin – not by taking it away – but by loving us. In His love all our failures are accepted. I do not mean our missteps receive praise – they certainly do not. But in our failures the love of God is proved true. And in this He receives praise. 

So we should enter into worship boldly broken. Knowing the King has prepared a place for us – no mater how colored and varied our life appears.

… And do not stress, Princess Ivy and Princess Phoebe brought the ball to the wizard and he was able to repair it with a patch. Even more importantly, they convinced him to come out into the world with them. As they traveled down the paint covered corridor the color returned to their clothes. Ivy and Phoebe’s garments became orange. Then colors from every direction floated back to the wizard. His robes shimmered and glistened. And as the girls watched his clothes depicted starry nights and sunrises and… Then the wizard remembered how much he loved the colors of life and he rejoiced.

The girls bounced the ball all the way home. With each bounce a color went from the world back into the ball. The red of the grass splashed back, leaving the grass green. The yellow of the sky returned to the ball, leaving blue. With each bounce the world was made right. Then one final bounce and the orange of the girls clothes went form orange back to purple and pink. With everything back to normal they girls returned the ball to the wizard.

When they arrived back at the castle the girls began to laugh, because there was king daddy dressed all in brown… (Okay, I can not make a long story short… just shorter!)