We recently did some remodeling in our bathroom.   My way of handling it was to run away with my friend and go shopping for 2 days.  The house was a mess, with tools and dry wall all over the place.  The noise of breaking up our cast iron tub would have been loud and irritating, so I left it all to someone else.

When breaking up the tub, they poked a hole in the toilet, so we had to get a new toilet as well.  Then the tile had to be re-attached and the flooring adjusted to accommodate the new shower.  The bathroom looks great now, but while the work was in progress, it was  not a pretty sight.

Running away perhaps wasn’t the most helpful solution to my inconvenience, but it worked for me.  I just didn’t want to deal with the noise and mess, not to mention the men working on the project.

We as Christians sometimes want to run away when we see a “remodel” of our church or  an individual we know.  Change can be messy, but we all must allow ourselves to be changed daily. II Corinthians 3:18b “….we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

It takes patience and courage to stay and face the issue as the change is taking place.  We can be of help to those in the midst of the change, if we stay focused on the finished product.  I remember when our church was remodeling and moving into a new building.  There was plenty of work to go around and plenty of disagreements about what should go where, or the choice of wallpaper in the ladies room. It was nothing serious in nature, just details.

One family left the church during all this transition.  They miraculously returned a few weeks after we were moved into the new building.  They didn’t stay for all the mess and transition.  They chose to run away(sound familiar?).  They missed all the mess, but they also missed all the fellowship.  They missed all the challenges, but they also missed a great opprotunity to serve.  They returned to a beautiful new facility, but missed “owning” a portion of the blessing.