May 21 - Interior Design

May 21 - Interior Design - 2 Timothy 1:8-12

Diane says:
Paul. In chains in a Roman prison. But, that isn't what he is thinking about. He considers himself to be Christ's prisoner. For His sake and for His purpose.

We often say it, but the truth of these verse is so raw considering Paul's external condition. We have done nothing to deserve the salvation that God offers us. It was given to us before the beginning of time, but was revealed when Jesus appeared on earth. Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life AND immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:10) These powerful words are our lifeline. Nothing we can do in our lives can draw us any closer to God than what Christ did for us on the cross.

Do any of us actually consider that we are suffering for Christ? Really? Or are we sometimes just inconvenienced and feel a little bit of pain and call that suffering. Would we? Could we?

Rebecca says:
I always wanted to be an interior designer. I decided that in eighth grade during a home economics class. We had to design a room and pick out fabric swatches, paint colors and accessories and make a little story board to display all our choices. I am a fan of fabric, loved textiles of every shape and size and could get lost in lamp stores because I can dream up entire rooms based on the shape and color of a light that tickles my fancy. I love thinking of vignettes, shopping for furniture, creating color schemes, and designing curtains. But I am not an interior designer because of HGTV. You see, it was there that my proverbial bubble was popped and I realized that part of being a decorator involved painting and possible carpentry, and hanging wallpaper and to be frank, I am not into manual labor. If it involves a ladder, paintbrushes or coveralls of any sort I am not really interested. I like the flashy side of decorating, the fun parts of shopping and creating and know that I would burn out quickly in days filled with cutting and measuring wall paper. I just want to pick it out I don’t want to hang it!

Sometimes I think that kind of translates to religion. When I first came on board I was like the Pollyanna of Christianity. So happy about God that butterflies were flying out my ears and daisies were sprouting on my knee caps. I whistled through the first year or two like Julie Andrews from the Sound of Music singing on the mountain top. There was nothing you could say or do to convince me that this life was not the most glorious life that ever existed. I thought God was all about the lollipops and soft kitten purrs of life and that anything that was bad had nothing to do with Him. If you were sad or going through some hard stuff it had to be of your own doing because Daddy Dearest would never ever make one of His beloved children cry. Just as I was getting comfortable with my armchair in Oz, my world began to crumble. It took about four years for the entire landscape to be bulldozed, but piece by piece of my Pollyanna wonderland fell into oblivion.

I tasted death, sickness, poverty, homelessness, loneliness, abandonment, unemployment, and a vast myriad of days filled with stubbed toes, broken down cars, and uncooperative allies. It was a huge wake up call to me and for the first year I just kept asking God what I did to deserve it all, what areas of my life were so bad that I was being punished and what it would take to just get back to Oz, because my yellow brick road was black as soot.

I began to think that maybe if it was this hard that I didn’t want it and would hang Christianity on the same hook as my Interior Designer dream because it was just to hard. It took me a very long while and God’s infinite patience to finally show me that God is God all the time in the good and the bad and that none of it is a punishment but sometimes His big picture is more important than our temporal comfort.

We think that often if we do or say or pray or fast all the right ways this life will be free of persecution and imprisonments, and sickness and even death but Paul understood that even in the darkest of caves, chained up and imprisoned because of Christ we still taste more freedom than we deserve. Just because he loves us even on our worst day we are still at our best. It comes with time and the day after day of walking and working out our salvation that we realize that all of it, the homelessness, the poverty, the imprisonment, is all just temporal that’s all. A circumstance that may impede on our emotions and cause us to feel unhappy but does not shake the inner joy that is held fast by Him through thick and thin.

Sometimes when things aren’t going right we are ashamed to show it, ashamed to admit that our life does not resemble any Julie Andrews mountain top moment. We think that if we don’t appear a certain way people might mistakenly think or say that is because we were bad or God is not good. And truthfully often they will. But even on our worst day in the midst of Oz crumbling around us, we should not be ashamed to testify about our Lord or ashamed to be suffering like we are. It is when we are weak that we are able to show the world that He is strong. It is then that we are able to step out of the way and above rhyme or reason or logic when we are still standing and singing even though our world has crumbled we tell the world of His strength which is the only evident reasoning for us to still be standing.

The world justifies goodness. When our lives are peachy it’s easy to swallow the God part because that makes sense and easy for non believers to discount Him because there are a million reasons why we appear content. But in the bad, in the suffering, when we still have joy, when we still whistle through the weeping, and we still stand when by all logic and reasoning we should lay broken, the world has a harder time with justification and is forced to come face to face with the power of God and His goodness which shines through even in the midst of pain.

Paul got this, he was so certain of this, so certain of God and even of himself that there was nothing, no situation that would or could shake his faith and even in chains he was an example of all that we should hope to be. I wonder what chains you and I are under today - there’s some buried somewhere - and I hope that even in the darkened cave we will still also remember our hope and remain convinced that he is able to guard what we have entrusted to him for that day. Christianity isn’t all about the fun stuff. Sometimes it requires the ladders and the coveralls and some sweat, but we are blessed to be part of His grand design.