“He lives my mansion to prepare” (Samuel Medley, “I Know That My Redeemer Lives”). “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity). If we will trust in our Savior Jesus Christ, and trust that the blueprints that He has drawn up for the glorious mansion that He intends to make out of us and to prepare for us, then we may just have the humility to submit to all of the many and often painful, scary, and hard to bear transformations that He must inflict upon us to build us into who we were always meant to be. As is so often the case when building a house, let alone a mansion, there will be long delays and escalating costs and most likely more than a few times we will throw our hands up in despair of it ever being finished and demand that all work cease immediately. But if we will press forward with faith and rely on the wisdom and grace and support of Jesus Christ, then we will be able to dwell with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in a beautiful mansion that perfectly fits us, because we will have been just as lovingly built out and adorned by the Master Carpenter.
