Remodeling

 October 20, 2020

Sometimes it seems that progress is measured by how much you’re going backwards. This year’s home improvement project is an upstairs laundry room. The basement stairs are steep, and Linda has this thing about me wearing clean clothes. Since neither of us falls in the youthful, lithe, and sprightly category anymore, bringing things upstairs seems the prudent thing to do.

The only reasonable place to put a laundry room is out back off the small bedroom between the Millstone room and the kitchen. The entry to the basement is in the way and needed to be removed and replaced. Enter John Deere. I am so thankful for that little tractor! It has made possible all sorts of projects that simply wouldn’t have happened without it. This time, it became the demolition machine, ripping the roof loose and yanking it away from the house. These projects are never straightforward, and today’s work was no exception. As I pulled the roof away from the side of the house, the old siding under the vinyl was also exposed, revealing a significant amount of dry rot. Much of it will be cut away when the new room is added, but it makes me wonder what the rest of the house is like.

Right now, progress is measured by the pile of rubble where the old entry had been, and a gap in the siding where it was attached to the house. We still need to excavate for the footer before we can make what will actually look like progress.

Life is often like that. Before we can move forward, the rubble of the old life must be torn away and hauled off. As we work to do this, we often find spiritual or emotional dry rot that the previous owner had hidden beneath a surface repair that had merely covered over the problem. The work of the Cross is what tears away and exposes the decay that we hide beneath a veneer of good works and polite social interaction. In life, I was the former owner. Now I belong to Christ, who as St. Paul said, bought me with the price of his own blood. When we transfer ownership of ourselves to Jesus Christ, he starts tearing off the habits and practices we’ve used to cover over the inner rot of our souls. It can get pretty messy, but he then gives us the responsibility of hauling away the rubble so he can begin the rebuilding of a habitation first for him to dwell. 

I’m often surprised by the things I discover when through Scripture and prayer, through the wisdom of a friend, or the preaching of the Word, God starts ripping off all the stuff I thought looked pretty good, but which hid a deeper work that needed to be done. It’s never pleasant work, but the end result is worth it, and I’m thankful tonight the the New Owner of this residence isn’t content to leave it the way he found it.