God Doesn’t Bulldoze People

I don’t think God bulldozes people to the ground and rebuilds them to make them better.  I think the way God operates is that he fixes up the current structure.  He comes to us because we cannot come to him.  He chooses to start on us – he chooses to make us his project house.  (Most have a lot of work to do on them.)

I think he takes our rundown shack and builds on a three-season room on the back.  Then he may jack up the front porch to make it level.  He may change our siding, repair, or just paint us.  He may improve the landscaping and repair the roof.  But the real interesting stuff is what God does on the inside of our dwellings…

There might be a hole punched in a wall, and, instead of patching it – covering it over so that it only looks nice on the outside, though the scar remains on the inside – the history, the textures, the lines, the shadows, the depth, the light… God may simply hang a frame around the hole, effectively calling attention to it, turning the destruction into a focal point of our lives.  It will be a work of art in its imperfection.

He may just scrub the old wallpaper and clean the old original wood floors - restoring, bringing out their original luster.

That wall that was so unsure – that even might have collapsed inside us – maybe God doesn’t rebuild it.  Maybe God just takes a moment, takes a look from different angles and says, 'I think we’ll leave that wall down and just clean up the debris.  This room will work much better being open like this – it’s better for the light, and it will feel much more free in here.'  That’s a God I want to worship.  That’s a God I want to have onsite and working inside me.  I hope he never gets tired of renovating me.  (I actually hope there is so much wrong with me that the work on me never gets done so I can have God with me always.)  I would really enjoy always taking his lunch break with him and hearing about the work he’s done and the plans he has yet for me.  Even if He didn’t share all or any of his plans with me and for me, I would know by the twinkle in His eye, the joy in His heart and demeanor, and the evidence of his past work on me that whatever he plans for me in the future, I’m gonna like it, and it’s going to be beautiful, functional; a timeless masterpiece by the hands of the same One who made Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and you.

How much resistance do I put up to all this work that he wants to do?  Do I let the master craftsman do his thing and make me a success or do I want to put on the brakes at every new purchase, at every new idea, at every nail pulled and every nail struck?  God has time and the energy for my fear, do I?