The Path of Life
Home decorating has become a cash-cow in the recent pandemic. Stuck in their homes, more than ever people are using their quarantine to do major updates to their home decor [1]. In fact, I have several friends who used their time to do various projects like painting, updating bathrooms, and buying new furniture. I wish I could say the pandemic inspired me to get out complete a home renovation, but if I’m honest I baked more and expanded my waistband instead.
Several years ago, my family had the privilege to build a house and at that time Hobby Lobby showed up quite frequency as a payee on my checkbook register. I wanted everything new! At the time, dark woods and red tones were in fashion. Because home decor styles change as quickly as everything else, soon after I had furnished my new residence blues we in. No one will ever accuse me of being Joanna Gaines, so when my family moved 5 years later, I packed everything up and reused these outdated home items as the color palette in my new residence luckily matched. To be honest I’ve just never been really into decorating and am pretty content to just keep stuff I like.
One of the things I had purchased back in 2011 was an empty chalkboard frame; the kind where you write your own message. As I was packing, I was prepared to erase the message. It read:
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11
I didn’t remove the scripture as I wanted this reminder to live with me in my next home. Instead, I wrapped it with newspaper and it still hangs on the entry wall of my home today. Every guest sees these words as they come inside.
In a world obsessed with preventing death, people have the wrong focus. Instead of working so hard to avoid, we should pursue. Instead of figuring out how to escape disease, we should be learning about how to find healing. The message Peter preached on Pentecost is still relevant to our generation.
Peter claims in his first sermon that Jesus is the only path that to salvation when he quotes Joel 2 a few verses before. God the Father confirmed who He was by “mighty works and wonders[2]” and carried out His plan to allow Jesus to be killed knowing He would rise again. Death could not hold a man who had committed no sin[3]. Peter holds out Jesus as the path to life. Like Him in His death, if we trust and believe who He was (the Messiah) and what He did (die on our behalf) then though our bodies may expire temporarily, like Christ’s our forerunner, we will share in a new imperishable one[4].
The Psalmist follows up their directives about where life is found to what that type of life produces: joy. For what other response can there be when we understand that all the brokenness in our world will be repaired? The next age, when Jesus returns and we are caught up with Him[5], will usher in the restoration of all things. Gone will be death, pain, sorrow[6]. Joy sustains us as it resides deeper than our circumstances. We know the momentary trials we experience will lead to joy because growing in our faith will far outweigh any worldly test[7]. This is what the Christian holds on to, not that we deny our emotional-life, but that we offer even that up to the Lord, finding light in the darkness.
I opened this post sharing how time at home has caused many to redecorate their homes. I hope it has helped you to redecorate the “tent” you live in now[8], the physical body you inhabit. You may groan with the burden of sin but life will swallow you up! God guarantees the promise because His Spirit lives within you; the same Spirit that fell at Pentecost resides within you every day. Lean on this truth when the bad-news seems to heavy and remember you don’t have to fear what the world around you runs from. Jesus is alive and offers that life to us, for now and eternity[9].
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