Spilled Paint Buckets

This weekend, I stained the wood frame of a new window we had to install after the old one rotted away. I liked to think of the old one as a magic window, slowly revealing the world outside as it really was, until I realized what the window really was: a deluxe home-value depreciator.

Anyway, as I stained, I came to a very profound realization:

I would never try to paint a room with the help of my pre-school children.

We might survive the first thirty seconds after careful instruction, but pretty soon...

sploosh.

In a vain effort to unsploosh, I'd probably kneel down, fondue-ing my pantleg in Inland Green. Kid 2 would be in stagger-back mode, tottering toward the freshly painted wall.

splat.

Now, tears. More motion, more stains, travelling stains, stains that will ruin my whole house if I don't implement some drastic and immediate lockdowns of now screaming children who had only moments before joyfully joined me in a home improvement project.

I'm smarter than that. I'd never, ever do that.

Even if I did, I sure wouldn't invite all the pre-schoolers in the neighborhood over for a clean-up party.

I realized another thing: my Father will never take parenting tips from me.

When Abraham was called out and told he would be blessed with descendants, God invited him, and all Abraham's descendants, to a painting party.

"Abraham - look! All this land is going to be the possession of your children. What say we get to work on it? I'll start by giving you a son in your old age and blessing him."

"Okay, Lord. I'm happy to help you! Let me just find my spare servant wife. My regular one is, according to her, past her prime."

Sploosh.


Ishmael is born. Because God promised to bless Abraham through his son, nations would arise that would eventually present great conflict for the descendants of Isaac. The paint bucket of God was freely placed in the unsteady, childish hands of Sarah's doubt, of Abraham's panic. That paint would run down through generations, and at least according to a great deal of modern tradition, would even stain today's political landscape.

The examples are numerous: Jacob swiping Esau's birthright (and Esau begging for a blessing anyway), Moses begging God not to wipe out the worshippers of Baal (until, of course, when he descended from the mountain and witnessed the sin with his own eyes. Then he went bloodcrazy,) Jonah dodging Ninevah, all the negotiations of the Hebrews wandering in the desert, and so on.

Sploosh. Sploosh. Sploosh-a-ty sploosh.

Tears. Motion. Stains. Travelling stains.

Yet God looks on the havoc His children wreak and loves them enough to devise a way for them to be washed clean, to be presentable before Him.

His method involves stains, too: bloodstains.

As if I needed reminder, I am not like God in this way. Perhaps it is because, despite my protests, I still prefer my rooms like my tombs: whitewashed.