My New Dining Room

Molly went away on a mission trip last week and left me home.  Whenever that happens I usually take on some home improvement project to surprise her with when she gets home.  I’m sure she is afraid every time she leaves because I’m not the most handy guy in the world and could easily get in over my head.  This week I took on our dining room.  It started out innocently enough, just paint.  After the painting was done, I looked at the disgusting 18 year-old builder’s grade carpet that my dog has used for things I don’t even want to mention here and thought, “It’s time for this to go.”  I peeled it back from the corner and thought hard about whether I could handle carpet removal and installation of a vinyl floor.  I decided to go for it.  It took me a couple of days, and cost me a little more than I had hoped, but the finished product is really nice.  I’m kind of proud of my work.  

That got me to thinking about the lengths that we will go to cover up things we don’t like not only in our houses but in ourselves.  We wear clothes that will best hide our flaws.  Women (and some men!) wear makeup to cover flaws.  When dating, we try to hide the things about ourselves that might make our date run from us.  When we interview for jobs, we never say the things about ourselves that we know will scare our employers off.  We are careful about the things we post on social media.  (Some of us should perhaps be more careful!)   We go to great lengths to hide our real selves.  We can get away with this to a certain extent because the people were are concealing our true selves from are not omniscient.  They don’t know what we are thinking.  They don’t know everything we’ve ever done.  They don’t know every wicked thought we've ever had.

Incredibly, our God knows all of these things and loves us anyway.  Psalm 139 talks about God’s omniscience and His love for us.  Verse 1: “O Lord you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar.”  Verse 4: “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold Lord, you know it all.”  Verse 16: Your eyes have seen my unformed substance and in your book were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them.”  This psalm instructs us about the dignity of human life from conception to death, but that is not my focus today.  I am focusing on how God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, can love us anyway. Billy Joel sang, “I said I love you and that’s forever, and this I promise from the heart. I couldn’t love you any better. I love you just the way you are.”  How can God love us just the way we are?

I listened to a sermon today by a great friend of mine.  He said something profound.  He was talking about how God has poured all of His love into His Son Jesus.  We can only experience God’s eternal love when we choose to trust Jesus for our salvation.  This was God's idea and His plan.  John 5:21-22 says, “21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. 22 For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”  God does not judge.  Jesus judges. Jesus gives life to whom He wishes.  The only way to pass His muster is to receive Him as your Savior.  The only way to receive the eternal love of God is to love the Son.  I know that’s hard.  I’m not saying that God does not love everyone.  He does.  That’s why He sent His Son to die for the sin of everyone in the world.  What I am saying is that only those who accept Jesus as Savior will experience the eternal love of God because the only way to love and honor God is to love Jesus who He sent.  

When I looked at my ugly dining room, I saw it exactly as it was.  When God looks at us, He sees us exactly as we are. No flaw is hidden from His sight.  But when we choose to believe in His Son for the salvation of our souls God chooses to see His perfect Son and not our flawed and sinful selves. What a great God we serve!

PS: Check out my new dining room!