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Twice Done Jobs

by Jerry Ousley  
12/02/2007 / Christian Living

I want to say right from the start, "I am not a painter." I don't like painting, I don't do a good job painting, and therefore a brush should never enter my hands. That would be my choice anyway. However, we don't always get our way because there are just some necessary jobs that have to be done.

This was one of them. Our bathroom ceiling needed painting very badly. The old paint had begun to chip and it just needed to be done. So I made it one of my "Saturday Projects" and decided to make it happen.

I think we are pretty typical of most families and if so then you have several partial gallons of paint setting around in storage just like we do. Deb and Megan were going out to do some shopping with Deb's sister, and I thought that with them gone it would be a perfect time to get the job done. She had mentioned the extra paint so we wouldn't have to invest in yet another partial gallon to add to the collection so when she said, "There's plenty of paint in the basement, don't buy anymore," I assumed that she meant the color was up to me.

Our bathroom is white with blue trim and has a dark green speckled carpet. Those colors look very nice together. I got a tarp from the garage and covered the floor being careful to remove all the bottles of shampoo and whatever else the ladies used to make themselves beautiful, covered the bathtub and floor with the tarp and climbed the ladder to scrap off all the old loose paint chips first. I then carefully cleaned all of that mess up and went to the basement to pick out some paint.

White would have been the best choice but the only bucket that felt like it had enough in it (I had no idea how much paint it would take to do the job), turned out to be sort of a lavender or light purple. "You know," I thought, "I believe that will work well with the color combination we already have." And so, feeling very proud of myself and my choice of colors I stirred the paint up and very carefully and meticulously began to paint the ceiling.

When I was finished I carefully cleaned up the mess thinking, "Deb will be proud of me." She wasn't. Apparently lavender or light purple was not a good choice for our bathroom ceiling. I guess I got a little hot about it because I had worked so hard but I also knew that if I didn't fix it then she would, and I would much rather have her approval than her scorn. So I committed myself to fix my mess the next day. We did have some white and after painting it the first time I knew it didn't take nearly as much paint as I had thought it would so when I opened the can of white I knew there was more than enough to redo the job and so I did. I have to admit, it does look much nicer than it did in lavender.

We humans find ourselves redoing a lot of jobs, sometimes because we didn't do a good job to begin with; other times because we just made a mistake or left something out. It happens and it's part of life.

I am so very glad, however, that God doesn't have to redo His work. Creation, even in its fallen state, beautifully reflects the thoughtfulness God put into everything He made including man.

I'm also very glad that our Lord, Jesus Christ only had to do His job once. His sacrifice on Calvary was good enough that no sacrifice was ever required again to pay for man's sin. It was more than adequate the first time. His sacrifice covers all the sin of the world if we'll just accept what He has done and apply it to our lives. What do you think?

By the way, if you need help painting, well, I'm reluctantly willing but "I wouldn't ask me if I were you . . . "

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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