If you’ve ever had at least a 5 minute conversation with me, you know
that I love watching anything on HGTV (Home & Garden Television), a
fabulous cable channel. It’s been an obsession of mine for about a
year-and-a-half; I can’t seem to kick the habit. Every time I turn it
on, I get the chance to learn how to add a splash of color to a room to
make it a little more exciting, how to organize my home office by
adding appropriate shelving units (not that I actually have one, but
someday, maybe), or how to take an old, dingy dresser that is falling
apart and turn it into a magnificent piece of furniture that can be
enjoyed for another generation to come.
I haven’t told you about my love of HGTV simply to warn you about my
strange taste in television programming, but rather in an attempt to
relate HGTV to Jesus. Yes, you read correctly- Jesus & HGTV.
What I love about the shows featured on this channel is the focus on
taking the old and ineffective things in a house and turning them into
something useful. Recently, I realized what a powerful metaphor this is
for the grace we receive from Jesus Christ. He takes us, the old
dressers with knobs missing from the drawers, and restores us into
something beautiful, something that He can use for His glory throughout
the world. He spends time scrapping off the old layers of lime green
colored paint, only to find another layer of baby-puke brown paint
underneath that. Yet He doesn’t give up, even though we deserve it. He
keeps scrapping away until our true beauty is revealed. We are
naturally stinky, rotten, and full of filth, but He repeatedly calls us
back to Him and loves us unconditionally as His children. Amen!
However, it is easy for me to stop there. Being selfish, I would prefer that Jesus is the only one who is abounding in grace. It’s much easier to just take grace and forgiveness, yet not return it to my brothers and sisters. But I know that He has called us all to show grace to each other, to forgive repeatedly. Honestly, that is so hard for me to do. I can turn my cheek once, but I get sick of it after that. I just want to give up and write people out of my life so that I don’t get hurt again. But that’s not what it’s about. God gave us an earthly example through Christ, and I pray that I will get better at living out grace in my life.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
that
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s
sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of
reconciliation.
II Corinthians 5:17-19
