When my brothers and I get together and recollect our childhood, we recognize our memories are extremely idyllic! We have great memories and feels of our growing up years. One of those idyllic memories is of my grandparents’ house.
Oh, it wasn’t a beach house or lake house, not a cabin in the mountains… it was a small, plain house in rural south Arkansas. No beautiful gardens… although there was a gigantic Wisteria we would play IN and plum trees around back. My grandma would make her delicious plum jelly from those trees.
My grandma’s kitchen was tiny, but she produced some of the best food anywhere! Her dining table wasn’t a grand table with multiple extensions, yet it seemed to seat all it needed to. The weird bottle of liquid with okra and peppers in it always sat on their table. It freaked me out. I never really saw anyone use it, and I wonder if it was the same bottle my entire childhood!? The closet made up for that weird bottle, for it always, ALWAYS, had candy bars in it. The grandkids knew it was for them! Their bathroom wasn’t decorated to any degree. But there was a nail in the wall where her pair of scissors hung. Genius! (Says a mom who has always hunted for the scissors.) It wasn’t even the safest house. Their open-flame gas heaters terrified me. Yet they felt so good! My grandpa’s room was always a bit mysterious to me. It seemed a little more off-limits, almost hallowed. Maybe that’s just the idyllic memory talking.
My grandparents’ living room was the place to gather. It was the opposite of spacious, but we were always comfortable packed in those walls. Talking. Laughing. Watching the Dallas Cowboys play. I loved my grandparents’ house!
Yet it was very, very ordinary. I believe it was what that house was full of, that made it extraordinary. Full of friends. Family. Faith. Love.
My grandparents’ quiet love transformed the plain, into the wonderful.
That is what Jesus wants to do for us. Transform the hopeless into the hope-full. Turn depression into joy. Change chaos into peace and purpose. And ultimately, turn death into life!
2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
That’s us! Jars of clay. Ordinary houses. Absolutely nothing special! But it is Who we allow to fill the walls of our hearts that transforms us into idyllic memories.
For while we were just ordinary houses and clay pots, Christ died for us. And then exercising that all-surpassing power that is His, He conquered the grave. He overcame death’s sting. He is alive!
Alive and faithful to fill us up and turn the ordinary into extraordinary, wonderful treasure.