In his book Reaching for the Invisible God, Philip Yancey tells about a surgeon friend of his who performs delicate surgery to rebuild the human hand after a severe injury. Whenever he gets a call that there has been an accident, the doctor knows that he will be staring into a microscope and doing delicate surgery for six hours. And this can happen at all hours of the day or night.

On one occasion, he was called at 3 o'clock in the morning. He was worried about being able to concentrate enough during the surgery so he hit upon a novel approach that helped him. He called his father even though he was waking him up at 3 a.m., and told his dad that he was going to dedicate this surgery to him.

Then during the six hours of surgery, he imagined that his dad was there with him encouraging him and even putting his hand on the doctor's shoulder during the surgery. The doctor reported that this technique was so successful that he decided to dedicate all his surgeries to someone. So he would call a friend or a relative and tell them that he was about to enter surgery and that this coming surgery was dedicated to them.

But finally, he hit upon the idea of dedicating the surgery to God. And he reported that it was amazing the power of such dedication. He could sense that God was with him. For this doctor, it was a specific way of living for God.

We should do the same thing. We should live our lives with the sense that we are dedicating every moment to God. Then we should sense God's presence with us and even God's hand on our shoulder.

So Mary and Elizabeth give us two techniques for making the mess magnificent. First, ask "What is God saying to me in this mess?" Second, dedicate ourselves to God.