Surprised By What’s Inside

Surprised by What’s Inside

You never know what something holds. Not even your own back door.

I tried to close mine for the fourth or fifth time in a day, and when it swung wide to accommodate my happy mutt, the bottom fell out. Literally. The metal bar on the bottom of the door dropped off, and chunks of rotten wood crumbled onto the floor. Which is strange, because it’s a metal door.

After weeks of subfreezing cold and rain, the old stuff inside the door turned loose, and so did the plate that was holding it in. It took me nearly five minutes to figure out where the wood had come from. Because a metal door isn’t supposed to shed rotten wood . . . unless rotten wood is what’s inside.

Silly me for thinking it was empty.

Sometimes I’m just as surprised by the stuff that comes out of me. I think I’ve emptied my heart of old hurts or mean memories or pet sins, and then they fall out at my feet—living proof that, even after all these years, I don’t fully know the contents of my own heart. When the stress of everyday living reaches a tipping point and the constraints that keep stuff in give way, I see rubble I don’t recognize at first. Then I realize it escaped my own heart.

I have three times more history (in years) with Jesus than without him, and I’m still surprised by what’s inside. The things I’ve kept far from him are the very things I want most to be rid of and that he wants most to heal.

The rubble from my door—annoying as it was—has served its purpose. It has sent me searching other interiors for more things that need to go, so that God’s fresh goodness has more room to burrow deep in me.

Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

Romans 7:20, 24-25, MSG