Right In My Own Backyard

     When our second daughter Cheryl moved into her own apartment, it was time to create another guest room for the many friends who pass through our home. I challenged myself to keep redecoration expenses to less than fifty dollars through creative sleuthing.

     For weeks, at yard sales, thrift shops and friends’ junk closets I poked and prodded, tape measure in hand, looking for just the right decorative furnishings. Little by little I assembled the pillows, bedcover, lamp, pictures, desk and chair.

     Then came the weekend I needed to make the room available for my oldest daughter Heather visiting from LA. I was eager to complete the project but a particularly fine watercolor seascape needed just the right frame. I had been searching for some time and was beginning to feel pressured, maybe even anxious, over that frame. Nothing I saw seemed to fit the bill – at any price.

     At some point my mind began to roam imaginatively through friends’ homes, stores I’d visited…any place I could think of for clues.

     Finally, in desperation I asked myself, “What do I have right here in my own house that might work?” That’s when it hit me! An old picture in what was once Heather’s bedroom, a plain, faded print, one seldom noticed, had just the right frame! Passing over the picture, I had forgotten the ‘perfect” frame that held it. I’d been running all over town for the solution when the answer was right here in my own backyard.

     Are you ‘running to and fro’ looking for answers? Have you been struggling to achieve a goal or fulfill a dream from long ago? Is there a project that remains unfinished? What needs ‘reframing?’

     How often does God whisper to us as He did that dry, dusty desert day to Moses, “What do you have in your hand?”

     Maybe the answers are not so far away. What has God given you? For Christ and His Kingdom, use it today.