Ok, I've been thinking again! Today I was thinking about the first house that my husband and I bought together when I was pregnant with our first child. It was a ranch with an unfinished basement. Over the course of the next five years, we managed to finish quite a bit of the basement. We did a family room with a gas, vent-less fire place. It was simple, but we loved it. After our second child was born, and the kids started getting bigger, we realized that we were quickly out-growing our home, and we decided to sell our house.
Now we are two houses later (our 2nd house was too big), and settled in nicely to a home that fits our family size and lifestyle nicely. Even though we are very happy where we are, my husband occasionally yearns for our original, much lower, house payment. When this happens I always remind him that we moved from there because the house was too small for us, and that we live where we do now because we love the school system. This usually brings him back to our reality, but I can usually still see the dreamy look in his eyes as he imagines what our budget would look like with our old house payment!
A couple of years ago, we were visiting friends in our old neighborhood, and we had the opportunity to see the inside of our old house. As it turns out the current owners were friends of my husband's cousin, so they invited us to take a look around. We jumped at the chance! They had done some nice updates on the main floor, but it was nice to see they left some of the personality. By "personality", I mean, the woodwork that our mild-mannered, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly, but had-extreme-separation-anxiety, golden-retriever mix destroyed soon after we acquired her! For whatever reason, neither they, nor the people prior to them, had replaced the woodwork!
During our tour, I found myself realizing that our old house was smaller than even I had remembered. I couldn't wait until we finally got to see the basement! I was so excited to see if they were still enjoying the space we had created. Well, my excitement waned a little bit when the wife mentioned that we needed to keep in mind that the basement was mostly used as a guy space. Ok, I thought to myself, I can handle that. Probably not very well kept, maybe a little cluttered, that's ok though. Oh, by the way, I should mention that our kids were with us, which is key to the rest of the story. So, what she MEANT was that they "guys" had displayed their artistic side on the walls with some graffiti! I took a deep breath and kept my mouth shut for about seven seconds. Then I turned around and saw the POSTERS. Posters of women, and not so much the dressed versions, I might add! Before my husband could even react, I directed everyone back upstairs. We put our hands over our kid's eyes and we were back up those stairs pretty fast!
I knew it was irrational, but I was pretty devastated by how the basement looked. That house hadn't been ours for five or six years, yet it was so disappointing to see what we had created so lovingly treated so carelessly and even deliberately defaced! It was this that I was thinking about today, and it made me wonder what God must think about what He created. We have this awesome planet, and we have filled it with garbage and pollution. We have completely destroyed entire ecological systems, depleted natural resources, and caused entire species to become extinct! How must God feel about what we have done? As I continued to ponder this, I realized that our bodies aren't any different. We fill them with junk food, cover them in tattoos and coat our lungs in toxic substances. What does God feel when He looks at our planet, when He looks at us? I can't pretend that I know what God thinks, but I can only imagine that it must make Him very sad.
We need to do a better job with our Earth, and our bodies. The Bible calls for us to be good stewards with all that we have. I personally am going to try to do better!
God Bless!
Genesis 1:31a ~ "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold it was very good..."
Genesis 2:15 ~ "And the Lord God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it."
Psalm 24:1 ~ "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein."
No comments:
Post a Comment