Staring At The Walls

Back on January 17^th when I began the project of repairing and painting our home, in my mind’s eye I envisioned the project as looking something like this:

Yesterday when I finished painting, except for minor touchup spots, I see that in reality our home actually looks like this:

Also, back on January 17^th when I began this project, in my mind’s eye I envisioned my self as looking something like this:

Yes, James Bond bares an uncanny resemblance to me in my own mind’s eye. However, yesterday when I finished painting, except for minor touchup spots, I see that in reality I actually look like this:

These reality checks tip me off to the fact that recently I’ve spent too much time staring at the walls.

Really.

When you paint a house using brush and roller, you spend a lot of time staring at the walls. For two months now I’ve examined the walls of our house again and again for signs of termites or wood rot. I looked for protruding nail heads, for cracks, for crevasses, for warped wood, for grooves, for uneven spots, and for misplaced drips of tar or paint.

I’ve looked at the walls so closely that I lost sight of the home.

I’ve avoided friends, skipped church, stopped blogging, growled at Ginny, alienated my children, slighted neighbors, neglected reading, forgotten God — all in the name of repairing our home.

That’s a problem I have with undertaking any BIG project; it becomes the be-all, end-all of life, a life we were meant to enjoy. The project lures us into living for it.

Yes it is nice to have the house painted and looking crisp.

But the price has been costly — and I don’t mean the money we’ve spent at Home Depot, although they greet me by name there now.

Incidentally speaking of money, while I’ve been painting, this past weekend, Ginny brought her computer out to the living room and hooked up it to mine and calculated our taxes for last year. Here’s a photo of her smiling and celebrating over the tax return (you can guess which computer is mine):

Have I been saying that we should never undertake BIG projects?

Not at all.

But I need to pick more important projects than house painting to obsess over, to focus on.

The Scripture says, “Thou, Lord, wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee”.

Even while doing other things, important things, it is possible to keep our minds stayed on Him. The sentence prayer. The quick, “I love you, Lord”. The whispered intercession. The hymn beneath our breath. The unspoken question. The thought of Christ. The remembered need. The prick of conscience. The second of repentance. The surge of thanksgiving. — These are true heart worship.

And we can do them with a paintbrush in hand.

Or a steering wheel.

Or a stethoscope

Or a spatula

Or a shovel.

Or even with a computer mouse in hand. Because worship is not so much what your hand does, but where your heart is.

Yes, the wise man does indeed build his house upon the rock.

But me?. I live in Florida where there is nothing but sand to build on. The next hurricane may mar the paint I’ve lathered on these walls so painstakingly. In fact it may take away the walls themselves.

It takes more than paint to build a home.

Building my relationship with Ginny, with our kids, and with our friends and neighbors ranks higher in priority than any amount of nailing, tarring or painting.

I tend to loose sight of that.

Fortunately, I am blessed with a forgiving God, a forgiving wife, forgiving kids and forgiving neighbors

Do you suppose that’s because of my uncanny resemblance to James Bond?

You mean you fail to see the resemblance?

Well then, I ask you this — just how many houses has James Bond ever painted!