Episode 152 - Painting Over the Cracks

There are somethings that I enjoy doing and there are somethings that I’m good at. There are even somethings which I’m both good at and enjoy doing. Those are things I probably spend most of my time doing. I’m not really sure if I spend my time doing them because I’m good at them or if I’m good at them because I spend my time doing them. This weekend I spent my time on a woodworking project. I enjoy woodworking. I am not good at it. After finishing construction there were lots of marks and cracks in the MDF that I had used where I had made mistakes. Although I had corrected these mistakes and fixed the problem so that it was made as it should have been, these blemishes remained to bare witness to my failings.

Fortunately for me, there is such a thing as paint. As I painted over my mistakes and watched them disappear seemingly by magic, the phrase painting over the cracks came to have a clearing meaning. There was also another expression that came to mind, something which St Peter said in one of his letters; “You should love one another because love covers a multitude of mistakes”. It’s not just in woodworking that I make lots of mistakes, and like my woodworking projects I am full of flaws and failings. But when people chose to love me and chose to show me love despite all of these things, they lose their significance, both to me and to them. In some strange way I think I become beautiful again (not in an aesthetic sense) as I was before I had made those mistakes and as I would be if I didn’t have my flaws. I become free by the love shown to me, and this is never more true than the freedom I have found in the love that Jesus has shown to me.