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Blueprints and Fingerpaints

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Words by Sabrina Saldana // Image by Lauren Fair

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself." C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity

I would have liked to see the blueprints first.

Because the honest truth is that it's easier to feel at home in a "decent little cottage" than in a palace, since I know what the rooms look like and where the light switches are. 

I'm not familiar with this structure he's building, towers and wings and all.

It could be fun, you know.  I could make like a Narnia kid and go running around the halls looking for the wardrobe, not knowing what I'd find around every corner.

When did that kind of adventure become less exhilarating and more terrifying?

Isn't he the carpenter, the son of Mary? (Mark 6:3)

Isn’t he the Creator of heavens and earth, of visible and invisible? (Col. 1:16)

He can build his home in me. The palace intended.
I hesitate to hand over the hammer and nails.
I fear demolition and additions.
I hate not knowing my way around.

I had ideas of my own. Blueprints of what this "living house" should look like.
But more and more every day I've noticed how crumpled and worn they've become from years of holding tight, all but falling apart in my white-knuckled hands.

He’s noticed their condition as well, and all the while held out his hand for what’s left of them, waiting patiently as I have considered his character, his wounds, his words, and whether or not he really would put that scarred hand of his in mine and walk me all the way home. 

This same outstretched hand lifted my head when I lost my mom to a disease that wouldn’t let go, carried me when I could hardly put my feet on the ground in the morning, and held me together when I got honest about how I couldn’t fathom his ways and just how much that bothered me.

It has reached down to pull me out of a pit, sent away my adversary, penned my story, and saved me from myself.

“Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and Your right hand will save me.” (Psalm 138:7 NASB)

Truth, his words, they have a way of loosening a tight grip.

So you could say he has watched over the years as I’ve colored in the lines of the blueprints that have always been his, long before I knew it to be true.  Just like a loving father watches his girl with her fingerpaints creating her own "masterpiece."

I think maybe he's framed my crumpled and worn, colored-in, painted-on plans to lovingly hang on the wall of the home he's building himself, just like a father would.

My fingerpainted ideas, in his grand design.