I suppose there are as many different kinds of house as there are different kinds of people. Big ones and small ones. Posh ones and not-so-posh ones. Ones that are bursting with life and energy, and ones that are just a bit tired. Ones that make you smile and – the other kind.
In recent weeks we have looked at dozens of houses online, and about eight or ten ‘in the flesh’, trying to find something that’s just right for us. In 95 percent of them there are lots of good points, but one or two things that we would have to change if possible, or if not possible, we’d just have to keep looking.
But one of the most frustrating and disappointing things is when we go to view something that looks really good on the screen, that seems to have most of the things we feel we need, is in the right area, and falls within our price range – but when we get there it quickly becomes clear that this just won’t do. This week, for example, we really thought we might have found it at last, and we were ready to put in a full price offer and look for a quick acceptance. But when we went inside we quickly discovered that the photography had been deceptive, and the rooms were just too small. Back to the drawing board – again! – hopes dashed.
When you look back over your life, do you sometimes wonder, as I do, at the detailed care, creativity and planning the Lord has put in to bring His design to fulfilment? All those experiences, good and bad, all those answers to prayer (even when the answer was No), all the ways He was guiding when I wasn’t even aware of it, all the people He brought across my path and into my life ….. And after all that planning, care and attention, how much of the potential He put within me has actually been realised? How often does He clap His hands in delight, compared with how often He must shake His head in disappointment? Hopes dashed?
Schoolteachers used to write in pupils’ end of year reports, ‘Could do better’ – perhaps if he ‘tried harder’, or if he ‘did his homework’, or memorably, if he ‘spent more of his time on this planet’.
One of my goals at my time of life is to reduce the number of times the Lord looks at me and thinks ‘could do better’. I don’t want to dash His hopes again.
God longs for us to ‘reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ’. (Eph 4:13)
