Under Renovation

As I type this, the sound of hammering is pounding in my ears.  The church started renovations this week.  What a mess!!  The existing internal structure of platforms and carpet were torn out.  Hammering, saws, and other pounding noise fills my days.  Dust and dirt and sawdust fill the air.  Fascinating items have been unearthed such as an old acorn that some critter brought in and left in the church walls as well as old newspaper pages shoved under the old platform dated February 25, 1929. 

Being under renovation is inconvenient to say the least.  The office is cold because the door to the sanctuary (which is not heated) is left open all the time.  People come in to ask me questions.  And it's not the ideal working environment with noise and dust everywhere.

 

Being under renovation is hard, messy work.  It takes skill, strength, patience, and persistence.  It takes a vision to see beyond the mess to what could be, what will soon be.  It takes a set of plans so those involved know the next step and the specifications needed to make that vision a reality.

And yet being under renovation means that something better is coming our way.  The sanctuary gets "worse" before it can be improved and more suitable for use.  It's exciting!  While all I see now is a complete mess, that mess indicates that something newer will be here soon, something we as a church have dreamed about for a long time.

And while our sanctuary is under physical renovation, maybe we as human beings are under renovation too.  Maybe God the Great Contractor wants to tear some things down, some attitudes, some behaviors, some thoughts out of our lives and replace them with more loving, accepting, sacrificial attitudes.  Maybe God is trying to renovate our hearts so that we can become more like Christ.  But in order to do that, it will be inconvenient.  It will be hard and messy.  But it means that we will be created into something better, something more like what we are called to be.

So what do you say?  Do you want to be someone who is under God's renovation?