On Being Works in Progress

Heads up all you do-it-yourselfers and HGTV fans. Before y’all commit to any size home remodeling project it would behoove you to refresh yourselves on the three stages of any home improvement plan: Let’s do it, why are we doing it, and, we did it!

My man and I have just finished making over our master bathroom, so this is really fresh experience speaking. For a while it seemed we might never get out of stage two. It was hard enough to remember why we were doing it when mortar dust started blanketing everything in sight, despite the sheets of plastic that were supposed to contain it to one room, but our enthusiasm took a direct hit the day the water pipe was accidentally busted. Water plus mortar equals mud.

To make it ever more fun, it happened that I was also meeting myself coming and going to various speaking engagements during those long weeks of remodeling. Beloved Hubby, and our contractor, who had now become one of the family, were asking me questions over the phone that were way above my pay grade. But, that’s ok. I may have asked Mr. Contractor his opinion a couple times during it all, too. “Hey Ronnie, should I wear the black boots or the brown?”

Glory hallelujah, stage three finally arrived. We did it! Stage two may have been ugly, but when we look at it now we are very pleased with what we see.

As believers, you and I are kind of like stage two. We’re works in progress, amen? What astounds me is knowing that even as Jesus is completing the good work He has begun in us, His Father and ours is already pleased with what He sees in us, and it’s all because of Jesus. I know. It’s crazy good, but the amazing truth is that God looks upon us with pleasure because He sees the finished work of Christ. Hear the two of them now, surveying the work of the Cross and announcing with joy, “We did it!”