Getting ready for a new pastor to inhabit the parsonage, the church trustees decided to refinish the custom made kitchen cabinets rather than replace them. This required removing all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts, and exposed everything hidden behind them. What I had kept hidden, or at least out of site, was exposed. The untidy accumulation of food items, dishes, cleaning supplies, and small appliances -- the tools of my daily living in temporary space -- were now in plain sight. Guests (more likely workers) who came into the kitchen could now see all that unorganized and motley assortment of my living.
Sometimes I feel like this: I'm a doorless cabinet where all that I am is exposed for God to see. And God accepts and loves me anyway. We can clean out our cabinets, but sometimes we require deeper renewal: Taking off the doors is the only way to refurbish the soul within.
