Second Night

Last night marked the second night in our home.

It’s been an interesting move in experience. Mostly good, but we found a few eye brow raisers in the process.

When I walked into our new home for the first time, full of anticipation, I expected to find certain things: an empty house being one of them.

I didn’t expect to find piles of dirt on the floor, clothes in the closet, random grapes scattered here and there, and imperfections everywhere a piece of furniture used to be: especially, when the family had been doing renovations. And they only painted what could be seen.

I have two possibly hypotheses:

1) Everything they learned they learned by watching the Mr. Bean show. So, when it came to learning how to paint they wanted to replicate his painting techniques. Those involved papering anything you didn’t want paint on and blowing up a can of paint in the middle of the room. Walls on the other side of the couch would not have been painted.

2) They treat their house the way so many of us run our live our lives. Why paint behind the book shelve? No one will ever see back there. It doesn’t need to look nice. The base boards behind the couch don’t need to be painted. We don’t even need them behind the kid’s beds. Let’s just take care of the parts people see. Why deal with my tendency to judge people? No one ever sees that. And why should it matter what I think? No one ever sees my thoughts.

How often do we only worry about how we look on the outside and let our insides fall apart?

Sadly, I do this all the time. I invest in clothes, shoes, haircuts, grooming products so that my physical appearance looks as best it can. I also spend ridiculous amounts of time watching what I say so that I don’t say something that makes me look dumb. However, I spend considerably less time on the areas that no one sees.

Maybe that’s the issue. I think no one sees them. I forget, or maybe don’t care so much, that God sees them. Sometimes, I even find myself thinking God’s as okay with it as I am: that it doesn’t matter to God how well maintained I am.

But God not only sees, He knows, all of me. He’s inspected the insulation in the attic. He’s checked the foundation for cracks. Every inch of wiring has run before His eyes. He does a far more thorough job then the house inspector we paid to check this house out.

No doubt I need to be working on the “hidden” areas. We can only hide flaws behind couches for so long. Eventually, more and more will deteriorate. I better fix things up before the house falls apart, so that this temple isn’t one day a pile of ruins.