Tuesday June 20, 2017

 

Years ago, two of my uncles decided start a business and work for themselves so they became handymen. Their first job was to paint the outside of an old two-story building on Staten Island. The job required that they paint a pitched roof with a dark, tar based paint and to paint the exterior walls with an off-white water based paint. They went to the local paint store and purchased all the necessary paint and materials and were now ready to begin their new career as handymen. Early the following morning they set up their ladder against the building and proceeded to carry their tools and materials up to the roof. One began prepping the house and the other opened the five-gallon tank of dark tar based paint. They were just about to start painting when one of them tripped knocking over the five gallons of paint, which just so happened to be positioned on the highest part of the roof. Immediately the paint began to run down the walls, on to the cars parked below, then on to the driveway, the walkway leading to the sidewalk and paint even made it to the neighbor’s home. It was, to say the least, a monumental mess. How does one even begin to clean up such a big mess? As there was no way for them to clean up the mess, what would have been the first job of their new career ended up becoming the last job of their new career.

 

On a much larger scale, this is similar to what happened to mankind. God created the world and everything was perfect, no renovations were needed. We however, made such a big mess of it that it became impossible to clean it up. Yet, God looked at our mess and instead of being angry with us He felt compassion and decided to clean up our disastrous mess.

 

Around the year 1876BC God decided to start the clean up process. Instead of starting in a place, He decided to start with a particular man named Abraham. Make no mistake about this however; this was a mess that only God could clean up.

 

Genesis 12:1 NIV

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

 

The Lord was about to clean up the mess and Abraham was the starting point. God did not choose Abraham because of his special qualities. God chose Abraham because he had to start somewhere. Like you and I, Abraham was an imperfect man.

On the way to the land God had promised Abraham, he had pass through Egypt. The Pharaoh noticed Abraham’s wife and sent his servants to inquire about her. When Abraham was asked who she was, he said she was his sister and not his wife and so off she went to become one of Pharaohs wives; that is until God intervened.

 

This is all good news for us because like Abraham we too live messed up lives. We too have messed up areas in our lives that we are not able to clean up no matter how hard we try. If God was able to clean up Abraham’s life, He can surely work to clean up your life too.