I remember just over a year ago as I worked tirelessly to take off plaster, wallpaper and cork under flooring from my sister’s new house, something dawned on me.
I imagined us, humans, as houses. All throughout our lives we fill ourselves up with things, plaster our walls, paint, put down flooring. Some of that stuff is already in the house, like brick, walls and doors. I’d compare those to our gifts, our personalities, things we like etc. I thought about how when we become Christians, things must change in our houses (us). Same way my sister and her husband pulled up floors and stripped walls, is the same way we are all in a process of undoing before ever being done again. There is much we have to do away with before the new can come in.
A scripture I really like can be found in Colossians:
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
Just before that comes the scripture about putting off. You must first put off before you can put on. And as you might already know, the putting off is easier said than done.
Back to the house, we spent a good number of hours pulling up some flooring in one of the bedrooms in the house. The cork flooring had been it in that house for I don’t know how long, and it had settled, making pulling it up an incredibly arduous task. Same way our former selves are settled. So many things are engrained and embedded in us, probably more so than we realise. Hence why Paul writes in Romans 12:2 that we should transform and renew our minds.
One of my most favourite (and least favourite thing) about the faith is the constant paradox that I find myself thrown headfirst into. Yes, there is much work to be done once one has become a Christian. There is mind-renewing, there is putting off and putting on, there is leaving behind, there is turning around. There are all these things that are in the continuous, that are part of the process and that happen far from in an instant. But then at the same time, it is all done and dusted the moment we believe. “If anyone is in Christ, he IS a new creation. The old things HAVE passed away and the new HAS come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17. This brings me so much courage and so much hope. To know that it is already done and I just have to keep moving forward, step by step.
do the write thing 