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I, Vickie, would like to share with you something that God has spent the last couple of weeks revealing to me. It has to do with my parent’s house that we purchased about three years ago from my Dad.
Back in the mid 60’s my Dad built a fine home for our family. The thing I remember most about the house was how my mother loved her new Oak floors. My mother was raised in a very poor, two-room house. She didn’t have the luxury of a bedroom so she slept on a daybed in the kitchen/setting area.
After growing up in poor living conditions near the Missouri River bottoms and then having a new house with a beautiful ten-mile view was a dream come true.
She kept her house in pristine condition inside and out. She did everything from mowing the sloping one-acre yard to maintaining the huge garden as well as polishing her cherished hardwood oak floors. It was hard for her to grasp the fact that God would bless her in such a way so she showed her appreciation by taking good care of what He had given her.
In 1975 she got an in-ground pool and didn’t even know how to swim. She took great care of the pool and soon learned how to swim and later taught her grandchildren to swim as well. There are a lot of great memories on that Oak Grove hillside that can’t be taken away.
My mother started losing her memory in the early 90’s to the Alzheimer disease. Her memories were rapidly fading away and changes had to be made. My dad sold the home to a couple under a lease purchase agreement that didn’t go well. Evidently they didn’t see the blessing of the home nor did they appreciate the time my parents invested to keep its appearance in top shape. As a result the place deteriorated in a hurry.
“Every artist dips his brush into his own soul, and paints his own nature into his picture---as he does in living his life.” – Henry Ward Beecher
We purchased the house and have spent the last three years completely remodeling it to exceed its original condition. You should have seen the condition of the once beautiful oak floors when we purchased the place. My mother’s oak floors had been covered with layers of paint. When I walked into the house her voice echoed in my head from years past; “oh look at my beautiful floors. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have something like this.”
It was time to get to work; so I got down on my hands and knees and started scraping away the layers of paint. There were scratches and some deep scars in the wood that hadn’t been there before. We scrapped and sanded for weeks until the floors looked like new oak again. After three more laborious steps the floors were back to their original pristine condition. It took hundreds of man-hours to restore the oak flooring to its original beauty. today But today it’s very rewarding to have people enter the house and say; “oh look at these wonderful floors.”
Later I thought that our sin is very much like those oak floors. So many sinful layers are applied that the real person is forever hidden somewhere beneath. While the sin may be applied in layers the good still exists underneath. When Jesus looks at us He looks right through all the layers and only sees the good and the beauty. That was His purpose for coming into the world and dying on the cross; to remove the outward layers of sin and exposing the good.
Be gracious to me, God, according to Your faithful love; according to Your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion. Wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:1-3.

As I was painting the walls I would keep hearing my mother’s voice saying aren’t these floors beautiful. I would think yes they were in the late 60’s. I also remembered ten years after building the house we got carpet. My mothers really didn’t want carpet we talked her into covering up her beautiful floors but she always new they were there and how beautiful there where. So that’s what God is doing in our lives as Christians.