My daughter, Anna, lives in a loft apartment. It is a classy and hip place with a clawfoot tub, skylights, and unique furnishings. It is decorated as only an artist and poet could decorate a living space.
When Anna was creating the loft she found an old barn that was being torn down. The barn was at least 100 years old. Anna asked if she could have some of the barn wood to use as flooring for her loft. It was my job to plane each plank using a wood planer. After the resurfacing was complete, we discovered beautiful wood grains and unique textures. The planks of repurposed barn siding were stained with a clear stain and installed as flooring. The texture and color of the wood flooring made the loft pop with beauty and class. Anna found smooth river stones from the Applegate River near where the barn once stood and placed the stones in each of the empty knotholes in the floor. The flooring is a truly unique creation.
The process of repurposing the barn wood reminds me of what some of you are about to experience. A season of your life has ended. You have served a purpose but now you wonder what is coming next. The exposure to the emotional and relational elements during the last season has weathered and fatigued you to the point that the structure of your life needs to be repurposed. You have wondered if anything good would ever come from that long and exposed season. You have also wondered if your lot in life is to simply decay away like an old abandoned barn out in the middle of a field.
Before the next season of your life begins, you will enter a God-inspired process of repurposing. God has something in mind that will surprise you, not only in its resulting beauty but where that beauty will be installed.
As you have contended in faith the interior beauty of your life has remained intact and deepened in the character of its expression. In your repurposing, God will plane off the painful exterior and reveal the interior beauty of your life. He is making you ready for installation in a new place for the next season of your Kingdom effectiveness. That repurposed place will cause others to stop and comment on the beauty of your life not realizing where you came from.
God always has a plan to repurpose our lives at the end of each season. When He is allowed to have His way that repurposing will always create something beautiful.
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