Perfectly Imperfect... Or Maybe Just Imperfect...

So I started reading Matthew today because I decided to do the "Read the Bible in a Year" thing a little backwards. I don't know if all the plans are like this, but in my Bible you read a couple of chapters of the OT then a few verses in the NT and last year it DROVE ME NUTS!!! I wasn't able to read enough to really get into it, and I hate feeling like I have to stop reading just because a schedule tells me that a particular verses is to be read the next day. So I started out this year doing the same thing and it was again irritating, hence, I am going rogue. I am going to read through the New Testament and then go back to the Old Testament. You probably didn't need to know all of that, but anyway...

I was reading the Genealogy of Jesus in Matthew and I was struck again at the five women who are mentioned. It was one of those things that I heard someone mention once and it kind of stuck in my head, but it didn't really sink in until now. Anyway, So I was reading and noticing the women mentioned, which is odd in and of itself, so I went to my handy dandy footnotes. This is the cliff notes explanation of the women mentioned (or the MacArthur footnotes version):

Tamar: A Canaanite woman who posed as a prostitute to seduce Judah
Rahab: A Gentile and prostitute
Ruth: A Moabite woman who worshiped idols
Bathsheeba (Wife of Uriah): Committed adultery with King David
Mary: Bore the stigma of being pregnant outside of marriage

There are many significant things that could be said about God's choice to place these women in the line of Jesus, but the reason it strikes me today is because I so often fall into the trap of feeling like I have to have it all together to be used by God. I grew up (and continue to learn and grow) in a church with amazing theology, so I have enough head knowledge to be able to say that that is messed up and not what the Bible teaches, but I still find myself living like that is true from time to time. God oh so subtly reminded me that He chooses who he wants, and he expects us to grow and learn through the process, but he asks us to come to him as we are and let him do the changing work in us. It's so freeing to know that He is doing a changing work in my and refining me to what he wants me to be, regardless of how tarnished I am now.