Renovate.

One of our church bathrooms is being remodeled. It is changing from bathroom to baaaaathroom. And it's very exciting for us. It's going to be so much more useful. We're adding a shower. So now, it's official:  we never have to leave. It's been a joke among us as a staff that we already feel a bit like we live here and now, we can! Of course we won't, though. (At least until we install some closets and get a couch.)

But watching this renovation has taken on a personal meaning for me. Isaiah 54 has been my focus passage this year. If you're a "churchy" person, you'll know it as the "tent stakes" passage:  spread out your stakes, lengthen your cords, enlarge the place of your dwelling! So, when I felt the Lord draw my attention to those verses, I had to find out the modern equivalent. I mentioned in a previous post that it's essentially God telling a barren woman, a desolate woman, to add a room (or two) onto her house. And, when that donned on me, everything made a lot more sense. 

Early this year, as I began clinging to God's promises in Isaiah 54, the reasons to hold fast to His Word became more and more. And they edged closer and closer to the deepest recesses of my heart. Family trials, personal hardships, relationships that just haven't worked out. Until I found myself standing in what seems to be wilderness. Journeying hand-in-hand with Jesus but seeing very little else around me that is certain, trustworthy. No more crutches. 

And now, I look on this passage and I hear it resonate in my spirit:  dream up the addition to this home, draw up the blue-prints, dwell on the possibilities, declare My faithfulness even in what you do not see. 

And, do you want honesty? I have been reluctant. Because here's the thing:  when you're being renovated, you feel you're of little use during that moment. Our bathroom here at the church has been gutted. Though something better is coming, right now, it's useless. Empty. Void. But bursting at the seems with potential. We can dream of how the tile will look. How beautiful the fixtures will be when they're in place. But, if we dwell on the "now", all we see is a busted, broke-down room:  an uneven concrete floor, sparse drywall, holes in the wall where there used to be light, or power.  

I am looking at a vacant house and what feels like a desolate heart. And I'm laying blueprints over them. Plans for family and hope and love and abundance. Looking at the now through the eyes of God's faithfulness in my past. 

Are you being renovated...? Lay the blueprints of dreams and hope over your life and rest in the Hands of the Master Carpenter.