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There is absolutely no doubt that my life has a long way to go in becoming more organized. Over the last few years I've made some progress and I'm finding that much of my disorganization has its roots in indecisiveness and clutter. Indecisiveness allows all manner of things to accumulate into clutter and clutter overwhelms my ability to create order in my home and in my life. For that reason I am developing a great appreciation for the magazine "Real Simple", www.realsimple.com. Sometimes I am helped by the suggestions found there and, at other times, I recognize that it will take me a long time to reach the prescribed solution. In fact, it is quite likely that I will never be an organizational queen - it's simply not the person I was made to be.

Concurrent with these efforts has been an unfolding discovery of just how slowly people learn, grow and change. My expectations of people's growth often allows for a plan of several months, maybe a year. I envision beneficial changes for both myself and others and therefore expect that compliance and growth will begin immediately. Obviously, results will be evident in the near future.

But the more I listen, read and watch the more I discover that these expectations do not align with God's work in my life and in the lives of others, past and present. God will extend his grace, mercy and patience over not months but years, decades, in fact, generations. God will weave together strands of love and light that point the way. From generations past, childhood teaching, the birth of a child, an interaction with a stranger, utter despair, death and sometimes through the church, God pours out His ever-present love upon a life. Our responses are varied. We grasp a strand only to let it go again at some later time. The scars of sin run deeply within us. Life is hard.

Most people consider me a relational person. I am finding, however, that loving real people means disposing of simple solutions and straight-forward timelines. Loving real people is not for the faint of heart. Loving real people means allowing for the possibility that I may never be witness to all that God will do in that life. That's a tough gig: investment with little or no pay out. But that's the deal in God's economy.

Truth that reaches our heart sears the soul and burns off all that is extraneous from the easy and familiar concepts in our minds. My love must be more real, less simple, if it is of God.