Chairs

The chairs, all of fifty years old.  We put fabric that looks old on the actual old, weathered torn fabric.  I cannot let it go.  A half century of memories and meals and joy all in old wooden chairs.  We fix them to look better, yet the memories stay fixed in the brain. 

“Fix your thoughts,” Paul tells us.  We cannot eliminate the dark that is there, the hard, the frustrating, the loss or the doubt.  We cannot erase it so we must follow where Paul leads…. to the things that are true, the things that are right, pure, lovely.  It is they that cover.

The hurt, the hang up, still there but covered, not by fabric but by grace.  Not to repair but to reconcile.  Reconciled to the thought that although we are not enough, He is abundant.  Transparency is the window through which others see Him and know Him and learn we are indeed fallible.   He is unfailing. 

That is the goal is it not?  To display Him, to glorify Him, to reveal Him in the darkness of life as the light within, the light that surrounds, the light the extinguishes evil. 

We fix our thoughts, we repair our outlook, we do not replace. It is the deep knowledge of the hard that leads us to the Holy.