Something New

So I just got back into my apartment a couple of weeks ago. I was kindly ask to temporarily move out so that we could get a new paint job, carpet, countertops, kitchen floor and the like. Frankly, I was a bit annoyed by having to move out of my place for two weeks. I mean, don’t people know how hard it is to clean up the mess I keep in my room?! And to just move it all less than 100 feet only to move it all back in 14 days seemed a little pointless.

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Many of my friends and neighbors asked if I was excited to have my apartment refurbished. It was hard to answer people with my annoyance when they had more joy in my apartment being remodeled than I did. But, as the last person out of my "old" apartment, I saw more of the work I was "forced" to do than the joy of the newness.

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Anyway, during the remodeling process I checked out the apartment almost nightly just to see what had been accomplished that day. There still wasn’t much enjoyment on my part…I was just checking to see if they would be done when they said they would be. They were pretty close on the timing, and after sweating up another storm to move everything back to my original apartment, I left my room a mess and started organizing the living room.

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Every day, it seemed, I would end up at the furniture warehouse grabbing a couch or a lamp or something. Before long, the living room started to look pretty nice. A nice couch or two, a kick-butt table, a dartboard, and some "guy" décor…a splattering of license plates and a wooden duck. And my attitude started to change. The new paint, carpet and flooring took on a whole new light. I began to be proud of my new apartment. It hit me one night, "Man, I have REALLY done a nice job with this place."

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And then it really struck me…how shallow am I to think that *I* have done all this? The carpet? Not me. The paint? Not me. The flooring? Not me. The clean sinks and bathtubs? Not me. Yet within a few days, I took credit for the whole thing being made anew. It’s kind of like what we try to do with God’s grace to us.