On Sunday I connected with a little used part of my ‘created in God’s image’ characteristic; that of being practicaly and transformationally creative.

A little while ago we had an extension built, and for some weird reason we, or I decided, I would lay a laminate floor in the 3m x 4m rather than let the builder do it. It seemed a great idea at the time but this weekend I needed to do it as the next few will probably be taken up with assignment finalising, church visiting and residentials.

Anyway … 10.00am on Sunday morning I started, thinking this will probably take me about 5 hours. (don’t look too closely at the times – I am a sinner, I missed church in the morning!) After 5 hours, at 3 pm, I had laid 2 and a bit rows. At 11.00pm that evening, Sarah and I clicked the last panel into place. My 5 hour guess had grown massively to 11 hours, and for the last 2 days I have been suffering with back and leg aches from crawling around the floor with fitting blocks, hammers and so on!

Some questions ….

why does DIY always take so much longer than we plan! Things always seem easier at the start, but take ages to complete. Afterwards you always find muscles screaming out in agony that you had forgotten had existed. To add to the pain, you know, deep down, that one of your first visitors to admire your handiwork, or your children, are going to scratch, break, or disfigure you nice new creation.

I wonder ….

was it like this with God?
Did he, one day, wake up and decide to create the world?
Did he think it would take only 3 days, only to realise that after finding problems with the plumbing plan, and straining to get things to fit just right so that the joins do not show, that actually the whole project was going to take him 3 days. Did he also race around the garage looking for the vital tool he knew he had but had been misplaced on an earlier finished job?

I wonder if God needed the Sabbath rest day as he had found new muscles, experienced new pains, and had difficulty getting in and out of bed without the angels sniggering!

And then came the pain; how long did God marvel at his handiwork before the horrible shock reached him – the kids were going to mess it up!!! They were going to mess it up, and bring their friends around to mess it up too.

Laying the floor on Sunday, just a little task, really took it out of me. I really needed to sleep and could have done with Monday off to recover. Because I wanted to get it finished I strained to achieve my aim.

Did God do the same? Did he invest so much of himself into his creation that it hurt to do so. Did he strain to finish because he had his own deadline to meet, to such an extent that he had to sleep the very next day?

I’m proud of my little floor and keep going back secretly to look at it! Does God secretly look upon his earth and think back to what it used to look like? All that personal investment, and look what we have done to it!