One of the very first things my husband and I would do when moving into a new apartment or house was hang our paintings and pictures on the walls. The hammer and nails were always at the ready in the front seat of my car on moving day. As soon as those paintings were up on the walls, they immediately created the comfort of familiarity, and our personalities took over every room. It was a way of planting our flag and making the new place ours. Even our friends who helped us move in would say, “Wow, you look like you’ve been living here for months, and you just moved in today!”
Because of that need for instant familiarity, every move ended up with the same living room pictures in the new living room, the same bedroom pictures in the new bedrooms (slight changes as we had more children), the kitchens looked similar, and even the hallways and bathrooms looked like home in a matter of hours! Ahhh, our comfortable home!
As the years have gone by, big changes occurred, the house is empty, and the pictures on the walls have remained the same. But somehow, they are not really the same. The familiarity has stopped, and the same comfort has changed. As a matter of fact, there has been a kind of sadness in that the familiarity and comfort can’t be shared the same way, sort of a melancholy mist that has been trying to settle. But read on, things get better.
This reflective revelation came to me as I was hanging some new paintings in my home. I was running out of wall space, because the familiar had to stay put, otherwise the room was not familiar, right? I was trapped, like being in a tiny prison, and I didn’t know who had the key. But I found it.
God uses every single experience in our past to build our future. As I looked at all the pictures my family had accumulated over the decades, I saw how each one occupied a huge part of my past. I loved my past. People whom I adored are all in my past. But God does not see me as my past; He sees me, all of us, as our future. He doesn’t wipe away and nullify the past just because I am now moving into the future, and I’m not supposed to forget it. All of those experiences have paved the way towards where I’m supposed to go. My life has not been taken away – it is being multiplied. God says in Job 8:7 – “And though you started with little, you will end in much.” He’s not talking about finishing my life with more things, or even more pictures on the wall. Good grief, who needs more stuff?! When we allow it, God will increase our faith, increase our significance through our gifts, increase our influence, and ultimately increase our knowledge of Him and how even the seemingly hopeless times in our lives can hold the keys to getting out of that “prison of the familiar”.
So, I am not taking away my familiar pictures. I am going to rearrange them, because they are still part of my home – part of me. But I have cleared the walls to put new pictures at eye level. My past pictures are now the outline that will support the pictures of my future. Those future pictures will be in my line of sight.
Excuse me, I have some redecorating to do.
Dance on.
Grace Notes 