We are redoing our kitchen. We need new cabinets. The cabinets that we have are original to the house and they are literally falling apart. They are made of particle board, which are chips of wood glued together. Time and water have caused the particle board to literally come apart in chunks in places. The problem is, you can’t just replace the parts of the cabinets that are coming apart. Plus you can’t save the tile counter tops on top of the cabinets. It is the domino effect - when you start to fix one thing, you impact another thing that needs to be fixed, which impacts yet another thing that needs to be fixed, and so on and so on. Think of the movie, The Money Pit.
Here are some spiritual lessons from this:
1. Change is stressful. Even if it is change for the better. Redoing your kitchen cabinets looks like a great time on HGTV (the home and garden network), but so far all it makes me is tired and grumpy. So too with changes in our life, especially when it comes to character issues. It sounds great when you read about it. Actually doing it is a lot of hard work.
2. Demo leaves a big mess. We hauled everything out of the kitchen and piled it up on the driveway to be hauled off to the dump. The pile is huge and ugly. You can make the spiritual connection.
3. Things look much worse before they get better. Ripping out the cabinets exposed some nasty stuff that was underneath the cabinets. The Bible makes a contrast between living in the light and living in the darkness. There are times we need bring areas of our life into the light.
4. The domino effect is brutal. When you fix one thing, you can see the thing next to it needs attention as well. It is easier and cheaper in the long run if you fix it now as opposed to later. The same is true spiritually.
5. Someday it will be worth it. It sure doesn’t feel like it right now staring at the bills. But someday it will be worth fixing. So too with your life.
There is a joke about polishing the front door knob of where you life. It starts with a warning not to polish the front door knob, because if you do, you will notice that the door needs to be painted. And if you paint the door……
Let encourage you to do it anyway. Clean up one aspect of your life. Then see what happens. Someday it will be worth it.
