Making Old Things New

I have spent a lovely afternoon making all things crafty. 

 

I love taking old things and giving them a new lease of life.  I love finding new things to do with them: painting them, decorating them, embellishing them, unpicking them, restitching them, reshaping them.  The list goes on.

 

There has been a trend in recent years for 'upcycling' (improving and 'prettifying' old things), and creating gifts and crafts from old materials.  And many gift shops and websites have sprung up which celebrate this process.

 

I love creating something, but I especially love it when I am taking something old and am giving it a new lease of life.  There is something really satisfying in giving new life to something which appears 'past it', or which appears to have no real use.

 

I love making things new.

 

I think that God understands this and feels the same.  He is Creator God, but He is also Recreator God.  In Revelation he says,

 

“I am making everything new!” 

[Revelation 21:5 NIV]

 

No matter how 'past it' we may feel, no matter what we have lost along the way, no matter what state we are in, He can make us new.  He unpicks us and restitches us, He cleans us up and gives us a fresh coat of paint.  He gives us a new lease of life.

 

He makes us new.

 

 

 

Repainting

When I moved into my flat nine months ago, I took with me lots of paintings that I had done in the past, with the intention of putting them up somewhere.  Whilst I have done this with some of them, there was one that didn't seem to 'fit' in any room.

 

This was primarily because the sky in the picture was a really deep, vivid blue and the colours, in general, were quite bold.  The colours in my flat are quite subtle and subdued and it seemed garish in every room.

 

I had left it propped up  against the wall in my spare room and there it seemed destined to stay.  Until a conversation with a friend about it earlier on in the week, which drew my attention to it again.

 

We tried it out in each room, and it still didn't really 'go'.

 

Until yesterday morning, when I decided to repaint it.

 

It is still the same landscape and the same image.  But the sky is now a pale dusty blue and the harsh colours are softer.  The whole painting looks much gentler and calmer.

 

Before, it was dramatic and tense.  Now, it is peaceful and tranquil.

 

And it goes.

 

I was really pleased that I thought to repaint it, and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

 

And I found it really therapeutic, too, that idea of repainting the past.  The process of taking something old that didn't fit in any more, something which I didn't like as it was, and repainting it, making it new.

 

It is so easy to think that we are stuck with things that can't be changed: mistakes that we have made in the past, or lies that we believed, or people that we pretended to be.  We think that they are fixed and unchangeable.  But there is always the possibility of repainting the past.

 

The Bible says,

"God rewrote the text of my life

when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes."

         [Psalm 18:24 MSG]
 

 

I gave up a few hours to repaint the sky on a small canvas.  But God gave up His Son, so that anyone who wants to can be repainted too.

"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"

 

[2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV]