Many years ago my wife and I had the amazing opportunity to purchase a new home. Well, it was new to us. To people on the outside, it was a pretty standard dumpster fire. We bought it in foreclosure and it didn’t take much beyond a first glance to figure out why. Like I said, it was a disaster. Probably not as bad as what you are currently thinking, but bad enough to skip posting a photo of me rolling around on the floor to my social media pages. All of that to say, there were some projects that needed to be done before we could move in.
We got to work on those projects and got them done pretty much right on schedule. That’s when the fun part kicked in. Because of when we were able to get final inspections and when our lease ran out at our apartment, we had to move into the new house on December 26th, the day after Christmas. Add to this the fact that we had a three-and-a-half-year-old child who really wanted to play with all of her new toys and all of a sudden it’s probably the worst possible day to move.
One of the new toys that she was so excited to play with was an easel that included a giant roll of paper and an assortment of paints and paintbrushes. Being the terrible people that we are, my wife and I let her play with a few of her new toys but told her she would have to wait on the easel until we could get moved into the new house. I know, we are the worst.
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Fast forward a couple of days. It’s a Sunday morning and we’ve moved into our new home. It’s a night and day difference. We have new countertops, refinished hardwood floors, and brand-new carpet. It was amazing. I woke up early that morning and left for church before the sun came up. a few hours later, I got a phone call from my wife. Our daughter decided she was done waiting. She got the easel out of the box only to find that it was in pieces. No matter, what she really wanted was the paint. She dug through the box and found one jar of red paint and one jar of blue paint. She chose a brush and got ready to create her masterpiece. She opened both jars and then… spilled both jars right onto her fresh carpet.
Immediately she knew she was going to be in trouble. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be playing with that paint and she knew there was no getting out of this one. She jumped up, slammed her door shut, and locked it. My wife must have heard the commotion and gone to investigate. She knocked on the door, there was no answer. There was only the sound of tears muffled by the locked door and the piercing regret. My wife looked under the door to see the puddle of paint soaking deeper and deeper into the carpet.
The church was about a 30-minute drive from our house so my wife called her dad who came over, picked the lock on the door, and helped my wife clean up the paint as best they could. It took hours during which my daughter was confined to her bed with no toys. Eventually, the stain came out well enough that you could only see it if you knew it was there and everyone moved one. We did however take the lock off of my daughter’s door. Lesson learned.
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The thing about that story that makes it worth repeating is my daughter’s response to the mistake. She knew she messed up. She knew that she broke the rules and that as a result, she made a huge mess. A mess that she knew she couldn’t clean up on her own. She knew there would be consequences and she was so afraid to face those consequences that she shut herself off and hoped she could ignore us long enough to make us go away.
Isn’t that often our first response when we mess up? We hope to hide the mess long enough to make it go away. We hope that we can make it look like we’ve still go it all together and if not, we run and hide. We lock ourselves away and hope no one will come looking. But what my daughter has learned since this day is that no matter how big of a mess she’s made, she can always come to her parents and we’ll help her make it right. There may be consequences, it may be uncomfortable, but we will always look to rebuild trust and restore the relationship.
This is the heart that God has toward his children. No matter how big of a mess we’ve made, we can always come to Him and He will redeem and restore. Over and over throughout the pages of scripture, we see Jesus live this out. Whether talking to a tax collector (Luke 19:1-10), an adulterous woman (John 8:1-11), or a close friend who sold him out in his darkest hour (Luke 22:54-62, John 21:1-25), Jesus always sought people out and fought to restore them.
What does that mean for us? It means great news because nothing has changed. God’s heart for his children hasn’t changed and Jesus’s love for us hasn’t changed. He is still seeking to redeem. He is still seeking to restore. And He is still inviting us to return to him. What’s holding you back?
No matter how big the mess or how far you’ve wandered, Jesus is ready to welcome you home. All you have to do is open the door and let him in.
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