Beauty and Jesus

So, my life is kind of disaster right now. I’m behind on everything.  I completely missed one of my daughters music festival classes last night.  I haven’t cleaned up dinner yet.  Every day I’m told that my renos will be done in two to three days.  For about five days now.  There is drywall dust and boxes everywhere.  But I abandoned it all to write for a few minutes.  Because I can’t get something off my mind.

Its been very easy to feel overwhelmed the last few weeks.  Moving will do that.  Moving into renos will make you lose your mind completely.  But even more than the overwhelmed feeling, I’ve needed an attitude adjustment toward my house.  There are some pretty ugly parts.  And the parts that we’re trying to make pretty are far from done.  I can’t even make things look presentable yet because I can’t unpack anything else till I can have the rest of the house back.  I keep looking around and just wishing I could fix it all immediately.  That my house would be pinterest perfect with the snap of my fingers.  I wouldn’t even mind the work of shopping and picking out finishes, if only I had an unlimited budget and could pay someone to do all this painting and cleaning.

Then a quote by Ann Voskamp came up in my Facebook feed.  It simply said, “All longing for beauty is a longing for Jesus”.  Well.  Talk about a sermon in one sentence.  Or as some of my blogger friends say, That’ll preach.

I keep looking around my house, longing for the pictures to be hung, the shelves to be arranged just so, the pretty colours on the wall, to get rid of the terrible backsplash in the kitchen.  When what I really need is more of Jesus.  On the good days, I can live around the boxes and the inability to move forward.  On the bad days, the ones where my perspective is skewed, I wind up frustrated and miserable.  And all this week Jesus has been using my house to gently remind me that I don’t need anything but more of Him.  I’m trying to let every wayward thought, every frustration, every bad attitude, point me to Jesus.  Instead of buying more pretty things, get more of Jesus.  Instead of complaining, talk to Jesus.

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve completely accomplished this yet!  If you ask a few of my friends, they will tell you I’m still a little testy sometimes!  But the gentle reminders are still there all the time and this house is trying its best to point me to Jesus…

Maybe today you find yourself longing for something.  We all look for beauty in different ways.  In our houses, in ourselves, in our lives.  But what we really need is Jesus.  So continue on your search for beauty - I definitely intend to make this house beautiful bit by bit - but let those times remind you that the deepest longings of our soul can only truly be filled by Jesus.