After long last we finally painted our dining room.  My wife has been after me for a few months to begin this project, but I was never in the mood.  I am not sure what happened last Monday, but apparently I was in the mood to paint.  That mood quickly wore off as the week went on, but I couldn’t quit in the middle.  But four coats later we have a "new" dinning room and it looks great.

The color is called "burning bush red".  We figured that the parsonage needed to have burning bush red in it somewhere.  Before the room was a cream color (as is the rest of the house minus the kitchen).  The red totally changes the room.  Now I need to rest before Connie figures out what she wants to do with the living room.

After we were done painting, I was made painfully aware that no matter how much preparation you go through to prevent imperfections you are still going to have them.  I taped all the wood work making certain that everything was covered.  I bought some heavy duty plastic to protect the carpet.  I bought some nice paint brushes; big and small.  Connie and I covered all the bases.  Nothing was going to get paint on it if it wasn’t supposed to.

After we finished I peeled the tape off only to discover that I could have done a better job taping.  But what we also discovered was that when the people before us painted, they did an even worse job taping (if they even taped at all).  Now all the white paint they got on the wood work showed up like a sore thumb against the red walls.  Our careful preparation seemed all for not (at least we prevented any paint from getting on the carpet).  Now I was forced to paint some of the white on the wood work to cover up those imperfections.  But they are still there (if you are looking for them).  No matter how hard I try, I will never get rid of those imperfections.  No amount of furniture or decorating will make the room look perfect.

As Christians we try to do the same thing.  We think we can cover up our imperfections through good works or keeping busy at church or putting on a pietist front.  We think if we "decorate" ourselves enough, no one will see the sin or the bad habits or improper behavior in our lives.  Maybe we can fool others, but not God.

Enter Jesus Christ…

…When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave, breaking death’s hold on us, Jesus got to work cleaning up our imperfections.  He took a wide, beautiful, artisitic brush stroke across our lives and wiped away all those imperfections.  He cleaned up the mess we left behind.  Now in God’s eyes, we are made right and holy.  In God’s eyes we are worthy to stand in his presence.  But we will still mess up God’s creation.  We will tinker with what Jesus has done and will need to be "touched up" again.  Through confession, Jesus takes another brush stroke across our lives and we are made perfect again.  But we need to continue to go to Jesus instead of trying to handle things ourselves.  No matter how much we try to hide our sin, it will always stick out like white paint against a red wall in God’s eyes.  Only forgiveness through Jesus Christ will work.

Take joy in who you are…imperfections and all and know you are loved by an awesome God.  We know this because God went to great lengths to clean up our mess; he went to the cross.  So let Jesus do the touch up work and bask in the glow of His love you.  Praise be to God and Amen! -EDH-