Demolition

Imagine that you are walking the streets of Europe and you happen upon the Cistene Chapel. You enter, look at the ceiling and decide that something is missing and so you get an enormous ladder, a paint brush, a color palette and a drop cloth, and then get busy improving the work of Michelangelo. 

Or perhaps you are strolling near a cafe, realize you are in front of the Louvre, and go in determined to make Miss Mona look happier by putting a twinkle in her eyes and some color in her cheeks.

Appalling thoughts, aren't they?

Yesterday when I wrote about God completing us, there was an aspect I hadn't considered until this morning.

What if our work in progress is actually part restoration to what God originally intended for us before we took it upon ourselves to make the changes we commissioned without His approval? What if our Construction Zone is also a Deconstruction Zone?

From personal experience over the last seven months, this is what I can say I have seen of this:

* God has never intended us to run around worn out and exhausted, too tired to do what actually matters most. When neccessary, He will intervene, forcing us to slow down and remove the excess until we are functioning in the capacity He intended before we added all the extras we deemed made us worthy, valuable, or indispensable.

* God will make an appearance in the areas of our lives where we have put an unhealthy focus on what we want in order to make His purpose for said aspect of our lives clear. Our extremes will be thwarted one way or another.

* God will relentlessly pursue our hearts on these matters from different angles until we are ready to see it and humbly submit.

Unfortunately God is not likely to take many of us up on a mountain top for forty days to show us exactly what our lives are supposed to look like. He gave Moses a blue print to follow because He knew Moses could handle it. But He knows we can't. Our hearts would abandon God the second they knew exactly what He expected because we wouldn't need Him to lead us day by day. Sadly we also tend to get distracted by ads, magazine covers, other people, and anything else that enters into our hearts and minds through our eyes and ears and that we decide to run with. 

But on the off chance God would show us exactly what He planned from the start for every aspect of our lives, how off-course would we be? And would we be willing to acknowledge how much of that was because we turned to the right or left instead of staying straight?

As His masterpiece we have to realize that He knows so much more about what will bring us His deep and lasting joy. So whether we feel like we are being built up or completely dismantled, let's choose to believe that He is not only good and knows what He is doing, but that His completed work will not only be what we would have done if we knew what He does, but that He will speak over it and declare it very good.