{"id":639,"date":"2011-10-21T12:19:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T16:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/smalltownamerica\/?p=639"},"modified":"2011-10-21T12:19:48","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T16:19:48","slug":"a-work-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/10\/a-work-in-progress.html","title":{"rendered":"A Work In Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently did some remodeling in our bathroom.\u00a0\u00a0 My way of handling it was to run away with my friend and go shopping for 2 days.\u00a0 The house was a mess, with tools and dry wall all over the place.\u00a0 The noise of breaking up our cast iron tub would have been loud and irritating, so I left it all to someone else.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When breaking up the tub, they poked a hole in the toilet, so we had to get a new toilet as well.\u00a0 Then the tile had to be re-attached and the flooring adjusted to accommodate the new shower.\u00a0 The bathroom looks great now, but while the work was in progress, it was\u00a0 not a pretty sight.<\/p>\n

Running away perhaps wasn’t the most helpful solution to my inconvenience, but it worked for me.\u00a0 I just didn’t want to deal with the noise and mess, not to mention the men working on the project.<\/p>\n

We as Christians sometimes want to run away when we see a “remodel” of our church or\u00a0 an individual we know.\u00a0 Change can be messy, but we all must allow ourselves to be changed daily. II Corinthians 3:18b “….we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”<\/p>\n

It takes patience and courage to stay and face the issue as the change is taking place.\u00a0 We can be of help to those in the midst of the change, if we stay focused on the finished product.\u00a0 I remember when our church was remodeling and moving into a new building.\u00a0 There was plenty of work to go around and plenty of disagreements about what should go where, or the choice of wallpaper in the ladies room.\u00a0It was nothing serious in nature, just details.<\/p>\n

One family left the church during all this transition.\u00a0 They miraculously returned a few weeks after we were moved into the new building.\u00a0 They didn’t stay for all the mess and transition.\u00a0 They chose to run away(sound familiar?).\u00a0 They missed all the mess, but they also missed all the fellowship.\u00a0 They missed all the challenges, but they also missed a great opprotunity to serve.\u00a0 They returned to a beautiful new facility, but missed “owning” a portion of the blessing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We recently did some remodeling in our bathroom.\u00a0\u00a0 My way of handling it was to run away with my friend and go shopping for 2 days.\u00a0 The house was a mess, with tools and dry wall all over the place.\u00a0 The noise of breaking up our cast iron tub would have been loud and irritating,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":420,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[10,17,19],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encouragement","category-inspiration","tag-being-judgemental","tag-courage","tag-faith"],"yoast_head":"\nA Work In Progress - Small Town America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/smalltownamerica\/2011\/10\/a-work-in-progress.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Work In Progress - 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