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My wife and I continue our work on the former “Snake Pit Rod and Gun Club.” What was once hunting cabin is slowly but surely being transformed into a year round residence. We’ve removed the 7 bunks, insulated and hung tongue and groove paneling in the bedrooms, used roofing metal and luxury vinyl planks for the bathroom and sided the concrete block walls with board and batten.

The last couple of weeks I’ve focused on doors. We’re using a mid 1700’s-1800’s style of plank door for the master bedroom, bathroom, and laundry/utilities rooms. I repurposed some screen doors and added larch planks and plywood to make the look more like the board and batten exterior.

But for the den/guest bedroom, my wife wanted something different. Since, generally, our guests will be the grandchildren, she thought it would be nice to do something like a chalkboard so that they could draw on the panels. Ideally the top panel would be used to list the week’s dinner menu (since I’m forever asking the great question: “What’s for dinner?”) And so another screen door was repurposed using some luan flooring for the panels, a tinted primer and some black chalk paint.

That got me to thinking how our lives are like a chalk board. We mess us. God wipes the slate clean. But like a chalk board shows the shadows of what came before, sometimes our lives carry the shadows, at least for now, of the consequences of our bad choices, what the Bible calls sin.

We confess that sin, even turn from it, but the shadows sometimes haunt us, the regret, the pain we have caused others, the pain we have inflicted on ourselves. Though Scripture tells us God removes our sin as far as the East is from the West, we still bear the scars. Wouldn’t it be nice to have those scars removed, to have the slate wiped so clean that no one can see the previous
mistakes we have made.

Well ultimately that is the promise of salvation, we only experience it in part now. We still bear the scars, but the day is coming, in the resurrection when we will receive new bodies, an absolutely clean slate. It’s a promise…

In John 10:19, Jesus says: “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” There is a door to a new, clean and vibrant life. Want to know more about that door of which I speak. Drop me a line: glen@bythedoor.com. I’ll be here waiting…