This is a picture just outside my office. I’m working in a brand new office building this year. A new campus. It’s lovely.
Well, parts of it are. The gym is finished and amazing. The main food court is completed and serving a global explosion of cuisine. Most of my building is done, but on my walk to the front door each day I pass ten feet tall safety fences and PPE-required signs while men in hardhats make sure I don’t cross the barrier to the unfinished.
This muddy mucky construction mess is my view for a few more months. Even as I walk out of a break room with freshly ground coffee and into a conference room with state of the art technology.
It’s unfinished.
I sat staring out at the scaffolding and thought how much it resembled my life.
There are really pretty parts of my life. I have a good faithful husband and three healthy kids. (They’re the tricked out conference room.) I have a great job I enjoy and work with people who have become personal friends. (They’re the freshly ground coffee.) I get to write books and blogs and kind people have me come and encourage audiences of women to lead well and hang in there. (That’s the new building.)
But it seems there’s muddy mucky scaffolding over other areas still raw and undone and into which you should not wander without full personal protective equipment.
Areas like unloading the worst of myself on my husband and kids even though they love me more than anyone. Areas like lacking self-control about what I spend or what I eat or what words I choose to use. Areas like offering up judgment instead of mercy and inflexibility instead of forgiveness and selfishness over service.
Yuck.
Even surveying all that mud and debris and piles of unfinished material, I hope.
I still hope.
I serve a II Corinthians 3 God that offers hope of transformation day-by-day. A transformation that leads to ever-increasing glory; His glory:
Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God…For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold… Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
We know that the construction at long last will be done. The scaffolding comes down. The fences are packed away. The dirt is replaced with lush grass and trees. The roar of power tools is replaced with birdsong.
Every day I walk to work and see the progress. And every morning I wake and see a new thing He is doing in me and know there is progress. It’s slow, but it’s worth the wait.
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:5
Photo Credit: Dallas Morning News
Oh. I. Love. This.
Thanks so much Kristin!