"We're scaredy craps - just made that up!" Steve joked with Matt. We were putting away our brushes and capping our paint buckets. The walls of a once dark and dusty basement had become a brilliant white (along with our elbows, shoulders, foreheads and shoes) and filled with laugher and song in just one hour.
Normally we would be wrapping up a scripture passage with discussion and prayer, but this week was a little different. Matt and Mary needed help painting their basement, especially with Matt's twelve hour shifts, a newborn, and the state of their house when they first moved in. Last week, over food
and games, our group listened to Matt and Mary's story. This week we decided to put the Bible down and pick up our paint rollers. It just seemed natural. It is a natural progression to go from reading the story of Jesus to imagining ourselves in that same story to wanting to see all of that happening here and now.
So we sang, we worked, we laughed and Matt and Mary just stood in the middle of it all. There we were as a little church, entering a home, surrounding our neighbors with love, and painting - painting over old stories with new ones; painting song over silence, painting love over neglect, painting a new picture of the Kingdom of God. Two coats of paint dried as nine of us made our way up the stairs. We wished them a merry Christmas and our hopes to see them again soon.
"Thank you so much," Mary said for both of them. "Now that the basement's painted, you'll have to have your next little Wednesday night thing over here!"
I smile to myself. Amen.
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