This week Danielle and I will be taking a few days of vacation time. It will be a different kind of vacation. We are going to spend most of the week in Oxford repainting Blake’s condominium. Pray for us that our marriage will survive this test.
I have two problems with painting—I don’t know much about it, and I don’t like what I do know. The last time I painted, which was a couple of decades ago, it took me a couple of months to get the paint off of me, and I still have traces of it on some of my favorite old clothes.
As I have shared the impending task awaiting us, I have received a lot of advice. Much of this advice has been unsolicited, but someone who knows as little about the subject as I do can’t afford to turn down any advice.
I have also been consoled by some who have told me that they are not very good painters either. Chester Grisham said that he and Sissy went to Birmingham to help their daughter repaint her condominium. After he had helped paint for a few hours, his daughter limited his painting to the middle of flat, straight walls. In fact, she wouldn’t even let him paint the inside of a closet. For some reason, that brings comfort to me.
While painting is a stressful thing, I am sure that, in the long—run, it is worth it. It gives freshness and a new look to a place. But painting is limited in what it can do. Sometimes it gives a false appearance.
In Jesus’ day, if a person touched a tomb, he or she was considered religiously “unclean.” There were hundred of tombs in Jerusalem and the surrounding area because many people wanted to be buried in the holy city. As Passover approached, it would be a tragedy if some pilgrim who had traveled a long distance to come to Jerusalem for the feast should touch a tomb. Then he would be unable to go to the Temple to celebrate the festival.
To guard against this, the religious leaders in Jerusalem sent out persons to whitewash the tombs in the region so that pilgrims could spot them and avoid them. The tombs were gleaming white against a dull background. As Jesus spoke to the religious leaders during the final week of His life, which was Passover week, He saw in those tombs a symbol of the lives of the religious leaders. He said to them, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matt. 23:27-28).
We still have a tendency to “whitewash” things that demand some deeper change. We can never be satisfied with glossing over our sins with a newly painted exterior.
If things get tough this week, I may appeal to this passage of Scripture to get some relief.
