Staying at a B&B somewhere down south, I awaken.
So weird to ‘wake up’ while still in a dream.
I read the first couple pages of my devotions on my phone but then, like when I’m really waking up, decide my urgency to go to the restroom takes precedence.
Exiting the bed and bedroom, I’m confronted with a hallway of 1930’s looking doors, wainscoted lower walls, trimmed, and then topped with paisley printed wallpaper to the crown molded arched ceiling.
I try the first door. A bedroom. The next, another bedroom. The next, still, another bedroom. The next, a wide open room with massive windows facing out to an expansive, beautifully landscaped courtyard below. Okay, so I’m on the second floor, but still haven’t found a bathroom.
There’s a dimly lit stairwell at the end of the hall. It has to lead to a restroom!
I descend the steps a few at a time, quickly.
Another hallway. The upper walls seem ‘normal,’ if just a little too white. There’s a damp, humid, thickness to the air here. The lower walls give the impression there may have been water damage to the wood panels in the past and someone has recently painted over them with a thick white latex paint.
The floor on this level creaks as I step to it from the last stair.
A kitchen is to my right. A dining hall is to my left. Still, no bathro… …there, just beyond the kitchen, a door with a stick figure man! I run to it, the floor threatens to give way with every step. I reach the threshold, open the door, and see a little sink and a huge porcelain tub with iron clawed feet. I flip the antiquated, round, electric switch feeling it sink slightly into the water laden wooden wall beneath the fresh white paint.
I close the door, turn to face what I hope is the toilet and encounter a gaping hole in the floor where the toilet should be. The jagged edges of blackened, moldy wooden planks jut into the void beneath the cold broken tiles of the floor.
Suddenly I’m enveloped in a fog smelling of the putrid decay and sewage filling the basement beneath. A malevolent presence darkens the fog, the smell of sulfur pervading its darker vapors, and dims the filament of the ambered glass bulb in the ceiling. It attempts to press me into the corner.
“Get off me, in Jesus name!” I yell.
There’s a flash of light and I’m wide awake!
The same ‘urgency’ prevails but now I know where I am. I know where the restroom is. Be right back.
…
The B&B is anyone’s heart.
Anyone’s.
What could have been a beautiful dream is undermined by the decision to gloss over conditions that are destroying the foundations of our lives. Layers of white latex paint make it ‘look’ okay but beneath the surface everything is falling apart.
There will come a time when what we need most will no longer be there. Then, worse still, will be the day the enemy takes up residence there because we don’t let anyone else in.
Consider your foundation.
Consider your home.
Consider your heart.
Are there places you are only glossing over with white latex paint while your foundation, God’s Word, decays with disuse?
Are there places in which the enemy has taken up residence because you’ve kept them to yourself.
It’s not too late.
“If anyone belongs to Christ, there is a new creation. The old things have gone; everything is made new!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17
What the enemy glosses over. Jesus makes NEW!!
