Have you ever noticed that it's harder to take care of old things than it is new? Like the chrome on my master bath sink's faucet. It's disintegrating due to the hard water deposits, and I don't care to shine that chrome very much because I can only make that faucet look so good.
Or take our living room floors. The hardwood floors, which I'm pretty sure are original to the 1917 bungalow, have been sanded down so many times that now the finishing nails stick out and catch upon our socks. The edges of the planks occasionally splinter and break off, sometimes sticking into us. And I'm pretty sure I've moped this floor maybe ten times in all the nine years we've lived here.
It's not very satisfying taking care of shabby things. I'd much rather polish an unblemished sink faucet or shine up an unscratched wooden floor.
Maybe that's why we need new selves to work on while we're alive here on this earth. There's only so far we can improve the old sinful self because no matter how hard we try, the old self is still old and flaking off and corroding and incapable of looking new.
But the new self can be perfected until it shines with Jesus' character. The new self grows and grows beyond what we thought possible. In this, it's not like a dirty albeit new wooden floor. It's more like an impenetrable fortress buried beneath the ruins of our old life. Every day, every hour we work to destroy the old house on top and to excavate the walls and halls and glorious chambers of the new fortress beneath.
More on shabby things: Mending, Eyes Up; Head Down
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