Walls, Windows Ceiling Tile and Old Carpet

Thinking about the aches and pains that are occurring after the LSCC work day this past weekend. This has been a week end of ripping out and replacing...flooring, walls and ceiling.  Lots of work, but a good feeling at the end of the day.

It is restoration 2012 some of the practical considerations....

Carpet
We never end up living with the present by accident. We are doing some renovations in the church which were long over due.  Getting rid of  carpet that should have said good bye about ten years ago.   As I was ripping it up on Friday night with some friends, I thought about the thousands of people who had walked across that carpet over the years.  I thought of the needs that they represented...I thought of the hopes and dreams that they represented.  Some of those people know now what Jesus meant when he spoke of paradise from the cross to the dying thief. Sadly some are in the same place emotionally and spiritually they were when they first walked across the floor for the first time.   But then it is just old carpet that needs to be replaced.

Ceiling Tile
As we were replacing the ceiling tile that were stained years ago with cobwebs in the rafters, I wondered why I had missed those stains for the last 9 years as I have been walking under them. I guess I never spent much time looking up.  I am not sure I like the sound of that...in church that is exactly what we need to do.  But looking up does not mean looking at the ceiling. It makes a thinking person wonder about what else I am not choosing to look at in my life and in my journey with these friends and fellow workers God has called to this place.  Stains that time just seems to drop on us unaware...it rains and the roof leaks and we choose to look away.

Windows
We painted the trim around the windows that have looked out of that building for thirty years.  It was just regular trim that someone wondered how they would afford 30 year ago.  It had been a natural finish and now it is some version of light grey or off white if you like.  What a difference in light that simple change makes in way the room looks.  The difference between dark and light...can sometime be found in the way that we frame things...the choices we make about the viewpoint we take.  Changing the frame... re-framing can make all the difference in the world.  I know I am lapsing into psycho-babble but there is truth in the telling. The view out those windows has not changed at all.  It is the same pine trees that have been there from before the building was built.  But, now since I painted the frame and I have looked out them...I see them differently. May the light come in those windows with new clarity and shine into our souls.

Walls

I am sure that there were conversations that occurred next to these walls that would make me laugh to hear. Some that I am sure would make me cry. Walls just create space they protect from wind and rain but many of the storms of life they are simple observers of.  They stand over time in the same place and form the context of our lives. These four walls are in the middle of transition and change.  They will not be blue any longer.

Within this context formed by windows, ceiling floors and walls, may the Spirit of the Living God walk with freedom, and speak with a clarity.  We honor the past but the past is not good enough for now...the needs of this day...the strength that is needed to reach out in love to those that surround us that those same windows can see everyday.

But the they are just windows, ceiling and walls...