What’s Inside

What’s Inside

I spent the better part of a morning trying to locate a house I’d never visited in an inner-city neighborhood I hardly knew. I was sure I was in the vicinity, but I couldn’t seem to locate the right section of the block. I didn’t see any street numbers, and honestly, most of the houses looked more likely to be abandoned than inhabited. Frustrated, I dialed the number of the artist whose interview I’d edited some weeks ago and asked him for navigational assistance.

“Oh, yeah, you’re close, you’re close,” he said.

“Is it past the vacant lot?” I asked him. He said it was.

“Past the church on the corner?” I wanted to know.

“Nah, nah,” he said. “Look for the only house on the street with a blooming bush in the yard.”

I waited in my car until I saw the artist’s wife come out to meet me. She invited me in, even though I’d only come to pick up some edits that her husband hadn’t been able to fax. She and I stepped onto the creaky porch just as he appeared at the door—a man in his seventies with twinkling eyes, a broad smile, and a white beard that barely grazed his chest.

“We call this our clapboard house,” he said. “It was built in 1932.” Even before I approached the doorway, I had decided that the inside would be just as unimpressive as the outside. And I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The tiny living room was a gallery of bright paintings: still lifes, landscapes, watercolors, portraits. The cumulative effect of so many of them in one small space was overwhelming. Based on the house’s ramshackle exterior, I had expected squalor—but the door had opened on an unlikely wonderland of color and story and creative riches.

I’m sure I’ve been just as wrong about countless people and situations as I was about that hard-to-find house. You simply can’t know what’s inside based on what’s visible outside. The God who designed us is not that predictable. It’s the contrasts that make life rich and surprising and real. I learned that at the only house on Saint Charles Street with a blooming bush in the yard. And I’m ever so glad I was asked to come inside.

Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

Psalm 72:18, ESV