For several days now, my home has looked (and sounded) more like a war zone than a sanctuary. As I write these words, my living and dining room furniture has been “dispatched” to bedrooms, hallway and kitchen, and no matter how often I sweep, my adorable dust-mop of a dog is collecting tiny flecks of sawdust in his coat that he distributes wherever he goes.

The repairs to the hardwood floors in my old duplex are taking twice as long as promised (isn’t that always the way it goes?) and my patience is stretching only half as far as I’d hoped.

I may as well confess. I like order. I like things in their place, and looking lovely. I like working to the sound of music or the muted street noise outside my window – not (I’ve discovered) to the screeching of an electric saw and the dull pounding of a rubber mallet.

While I’m certain the results of all this noise and mess and confusion will be pleasing, the process is really not.

Not at all.

Isn’t life a lot like that? We want things to be a certain way, to have a certain look and feel – and so very often they aren’t…and don’t. We’d prefer less confusion and more order. Less chaos and more calm. Less pounding and banging…and more harps and strings.

We’d like that – but for the most part, we’re all under construction or renovation. And we simply work around the repairs.

God knows the end result He’s after…and He has His tools assembled and ready. Sometimes there’s tearing-out work to be done. Old things must be removed to make room for new. Those tearing-out tools can be downright scary when used with force. And what gets torn out isn’t always immediately replaced. So we learn to live with empty patches until the master-craftsman fills them in.

Then after the major renovation/repair – the ripping up and replacing – is complete, the finishing begins. “Finishing.” Doesn’t that sound nice, and soft? It isn’t. It involves sanding and staining and thousands of even, repetitive strokes until rough edges are smooth and uneven grains are matched.

If I were God (and this is the place where we should all thank Him that I am not!) I might have been tempted just to start over from scratch. After all, wouldn’t it be easier to create exactly what you want to begin with, than to chip away at what you don’t want a little at a time? But the very fact that He could do it that way – and doesn’t – makes me certain He values the process. And me.

And that He’s quite content to allow me to work as He repairs.

“And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:4-5, NASB)

©Leigh McLeroy 2004