The first verses of Isaiah Chapter six begin, “In the year that King Uzziah died….” and proceed to describe just what it was like when God’s presence filled the temple. What a way to worship. (Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait.)

Anchoring a year by identifying it as when so-and-so has died seems an odd way to mark time, but I get it. This year, 2022, will always be known in my mind as “The year in which Queen Elizabeth died.”

Queen Elizabeth ruled the monarchy of England for 70 years. Although she assumed the role the year I was born she was not crowned until the following year, 1953. For all of my life she has been The Queen.

What does all this have to do with rearranging furniture?

I’m so glad you asked.

The news coverage of the Queen’s funeral service at Westminster Abbey lasted a very.long.time. I believe like eight or nine hours. I knew I wouldn’t have the chunk of time needed to attend to watching it on television so I streamed it the next day on You Tube, a mere hour and 14 minutes. Here is the link if you’d like to watch it; the entire event was extremely moving. From the choir’s singing of the Psalms to each church leader’s inspiring and Christ-filled words, God was greatly glorified, mainly because of the Queen’s faith and her desire to have it shared.

As the video began on You Tube, I started rearranging my furniture. As one does.

We’ve purchased a new loveseat for our living room and there are no viable wall spaces for it to be ensconced. (Yes, I just ended a sentence with the word ensconced.)

Tape measure in hand, I began to play Tetris with my furniture, moving rugs back, sliding endtables, pushing lamps across the floor and generally creating a chaotic mess in an attempt to make some pleasing order. As one does.

I think with my hands. In other words, I have to touch and feel stuff to make sense of it; to see where it goes—whether physically with couches and chairs or with piles of paper. Interacting in a tactile way helps me process the rearranging and ordering. Because, don’t you know, chaos and mess almost always precede a new creation of beauty and order?

So I moved a lot of things around during the Psalms-singing and processions and Scripture reading and quiet solemnity…. accompanied by a tribute to the Queen.

I never actually finished the redecorating process, (my Kingdom for an extra wall!) but it did occur to me along the way how much the activity reflected my current season of life.

There is much in our home that is in upheaval and adjustment right now. We have a new family member to whom we are adapting, new circumstances we’re trying to navigate and the uncharted territory of daily surrender to God’s ultimate will.

You would think after walking with Jesus for fifty years there would be little “uncharted territory,” that I’d get this daily surrender. But here’s the thing. I can talk, I have talked, a good game about giving up my plans and outcomes to God. But when it actually comes down to it, I’ve still held the reins.

Sometimes God will manage a way to take those reins right out of our hands. Can you relate?

We are never too old to learn something new about God. And He is always about creating—rearranging our ‘furniture’ if you will, redecorating our lives with that which makes Him look good.

I have held on to so many ways of doing things the last oh-so-many years that because of Jesus’ love, He will make sure I unlearn to help me remember:

• How to trust Him.
• To know that He is good.
• That he is bigger than all my ‘what-if’s.’
• And most of all, to fall into His arms over and over again when things don’t look right, don’t make sense and don’t fit.

Because, again with the furniture—isn’t that what rearranging our living rooms—the places where we live literally and figuratively, what we are always about? A new way of seeing. A new way of living. A new way of doing.

To find a place where things look right and where they make sense and where they fit.

I feel like I fit in the palm of God’s hand right now, the safest place to be.

In my hand is a tape measure. But I’m not moving a thing until He tells me to.