Painting

We bought a house from 1995, which is lovely but in need of a little tender, loving, care. I have been painting one room at a time, and yesterday I decided to tackle the dark red wall the was in the kitchen. Painting is a love/hate relationship for me, only because it is tedious work and takes a while, but the outcome is always worth every stroke. While I was painting, I started to notice small holes in the wall that haven’t been filled, a few cobwebs that hung from the corner of the wall to the ceiling, and smudge prints from years past. I never noticed them before, until I got close and started to carefully paint each part. I was painting every wall white, and it was as if God gave me a beautiful representation of myself. I was the wall filled with a few holes here and there, some cobwebs and smudges from years past and was being cleaned and painted white as snow… 

When George was only 4 years old, he came to me and asked me, “mommy, what is a stain?” When I told him, he responded, “that was from Jesus’s heart.” I did not understand and asked him again and again to explain it to me, but he just insisted that he needed water and would not talk about it again. I opened my bible and started finding scriptures that referred to the word “stain”, and before I knew it, I was in a puddle of tears. Jesus revealed to me that I was walking around like a big stain that wouldn’t come out, but He and only He has already washed it clean. How could this be? I thought we were supposed to walk around with stains, cobwebs, and holes for our whole life; that is just who we are and should carry those things around. In that moment of revelation, Jesus reminded me that I didn’t have to walk around with those stains anymore, for if I did, I was not truly understanding the cross and His blood that poured out for me. I sat on my couch that day and thanked Jesus for creating in me a clean heart and by His blood I repented and was washed white as snow.

While painting each wall, I thought of this story and how I it impacted me. As I wiped down the cobwebs, I asked God to search my heart. While filling in the holes, I asked God to clean out the places that I didn’t even know were there, to help me to look more like Jesus. When painting over the smudges, I thought of the scripture, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit” (Psalm 51:10-12). I was reminded to check my heart, to allow God to make it ever clean and remove the “impurities” in my life.

As I continued to paint, my thoughts started to wonder to Oliver’s room, the mud room, our bedroom, and the ENTIRE basement! Goodness, there is still a lot of walls that need painting in this house; it is a never-ending project. Well, isn’t this exactly like us? We are a never, ending project that will not need to be “painted” just once in our lives, but every day. An ongoing heart check, and continuing realization that we are in need of forgiveness and a Savior. We are a project that will take work and sometimes the work takes time. Just like my house will take time and effort, every wall becomes a new little victory! In the end, when you give attention and focus to all the little things, you will always come out shiny and beautiful. If you have been walking around feeling like my old kitchen walls, be encouraged today, that you can be cleansed and renewed by Jesus, and you do not need to walk around feeling stained anymore. It is by His blood that we get to walk in the freedom of who He called us all to be. As we daily ask Him to clean us and make us new, that’s when the beautiful transformation happens and in it there is beautiful freedom.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 2 Corinthians 4:16