I would sneak in quietly and stand among the dust that floated in the light coming through the broken glass of the window pane in my grandfather's shop and pretend to be a statue. If I moved, then the kittens would scatter and hide in the debris of farm life. But if I stood as still as possible, moving only a few inches every few minutes, then I was better able to catch a glimpse of the calico fur hiding inside the hallow tire. And maybe, just maybe, if I was still enough, they'd come out of hiding so I could scoop them up and play with them. Sometimes I was lucky and still enough for this to happen, but most of the time was spent being that statue that wouldn't blink as to spook the kittens. As I stood still, I'd take in everything around me and think through the layers and piles of metal and wood that sprawled out haphazardly before me.
I'm still in love with that scene. I still decorate with a balance of wood and metal. Tin and worn, distressed furniture. Perhaps its because it takes me back to my childhood spent on my grandparent's farm. Or perhaps it's simply because I love the distressed, time-worn pieces. They have life to me. I can picture what my grandpa must have been trying to fix when he probably dropped that tin can on the floor and dented the side in. Mason jars lined his workbench, filled with nails and screws. I can smell the sawdust whirling around in the air as the wood was stripped from its original glory and created into its new glory, like the little wooden trailer that would be hooked to the old rusty red truck and toted around the fields carrying cousins and friends through the corn under the harvest's heavy orange moon.
Judging from the home products featured in stores these days, and popular home shows that teach how to take old furniture or old homes and restore them to a new glory, I'm guessing I'm not the only one who likes the vintage farmhouse look. There are those who love the thrill of the pick as they sort through piles of someone else's junk to find that one piece of treasure that they can redeem and make new again. I recently watched a show on Netflix where a team of guys goes around to old homes or 19th century warehouses and takes history from that building-things like mantels and original hardwood floors, Victorian lamp posts and old makeshift cupboards, then they put a little string through a marked-up price tag and sell that piece of history for profit. Because people will buy it. They'll buy the marked up and scar covered old church pew. They purchase the 1859 original bay window seat and work it into the floor plans of their new construction home. They take the old battered hardwood floor and lay it carefully into their home and walk into the future while stepping on the past.
One particular scene struck me. The team took a large, elaborate bay window out of a house built around the mid 1800's. It was a delicate step by step process as they first sawed off around the window while another set of guys hoisted straps around the window. Outside the house there was a forklift waiting for the window. The idea was to gently slide the window out of the house standing all around it, a team of men on the inside and a team on the outside having a tug of war with the straps so that the window balanced straight up, while at the same time allowing the fork lift to slowly lower the window down to the ground, hopefully in one piece. I was in awe of how careful of a process it was to remove this tattered yet beautiful piece from its original location so that it could be restored and made beautiful once again in a new location.
Let's apply that same principle of restoring something worn but beautiful to our own lives, which God takes, no matter how messy and torn, and He restores them. Like the team of eight men that carefully lowered that window without breaking a single window pane, God gently pulls us out of our current location of pain or affliction or selfishness or wherever our heart might be, and kindly and carefully restores us back, but this time refining us each step of the way. He takes something that was already beautiful and He sees past the scars and marks and scratches, and He restores it into something new. There might still be physical scars, but our hearts will be changed. He restores to us the joy of our salvation.
Can we let the Lord toss us and turn us toward Him, even if it means temporary affliction and tattered dreams? Will we be able to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant," if we don't have a single scar to show because we were more concerned about a life of perfection, than recognizing our sins, repenting, and allowing the Lord to graciously refurbish us again? Do we allow Him to restore us often enough, or do we seek the world to do so? Do we trust the original carpenter of our life to make us new, over and over again, refining us through fire and flood? God's word does not say that the flood waters won't ever come or that the fires will always stay without flame. No, God's word says, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you," Isaiah 43:1-2.
Sin and suffering will enter our lives, at least as long as we're following the Lord. But the question is if we will allow those times to make us more beautiful in His eyes? Will we rejoice and dance at a life lived with risks and leaps of faith and seasons of waiting and tears of sorrow and wrinkles of understanding and scars of faith?
Whatever the trial or affliction, or even small and temporary pains, whether it's just a gentle rainstorm of a rough patch in a friendship, or a massive thunderstorm of illness or loss of job-press into it and find what it is that God is trying to rebuild in you, how is it that He is working to refine you in order to make you even more beautiful than you already are.
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