Covering the past

I finished the inside of our project house this week.

     The house is cleaned out and looking better than I ever thought it would.

     I know the cupboards don't match because I was able to save some and others are new.

But the house is rented for the first of June with the promise they could begin moving in the 3rd week of May. 

     With the house cleaned up I did not want to store tools inside the house anymore. That means I had to fix the shed. The shed had settled and the doors did not close anymore.

     A hydraulic jack and some 2x4s and the shed is back where it belongs. Now I can put my tools in it and lock it up.

     Now that I am starting on the outside I can no longer ignore some of the issues. I called Daryl this week to look at the front porch to get an idea of what it would cost to fix it. I had thought of a lot of different solutions, none of which were good. The cement floor has cracked and sunk toward the house over the years. 

     That means every time it rains the water seeps between the house and the concrete. The wood has gone soft and some of it will need to be replaced. There really was no way to cover this problem up and fix it. The whole porch needs to come off and be relaid. Daryl quoted me a price 50% higher than I had hoped but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and fix it right.

     The siding is a different issue. The house was sided with some cheap fiber siding that has degraded. I can put new siding right over the old. Not only will I save the labor of removing the siding and no landfill fees, but we retain some insulation value by leaving the fiber board on the house. The trick will be getting the old siding at the bottom to lay flat so the new siding hangs correctly.

     I pulled this tree out of the roof on Friday. That was when I knew I had to get that side shingled pretty quick. The house was not leaking at this point but pulling out that tree and its roots probably created a hole for water infiltration.

       I am covering up the old shingles with the new. The insurance company is not fond of that because it is more expensive if the roof is damaged by hail and 2 layers need to be torn off. I have been warned by my agent I will soon be getting notification they will not give full coverage on roofs with more than 1 layer of shingles. I took that into consideration and thought we could pay the extra if the roof ever gets damage that is covered by insurance or we could do a complete tear off now. Push the hard stuff ahead right? I am betting we are not going to collect much on roofs from our insurance. Lets just say the insurance company plans on making money by not having to pay too many claims.
    Some things you can cover up and some things you can't. I couldn't cover up the porch concrete problem in a reasonable fashion. I can cover the siding and the shingles to my satisfaction.
I wonder sometimes if we can cover up our past. All of our sins are forgiven if we have Jesus as our savior and repent, but do we accept that?
     Saul was busy persecuting Christians when he was stopped on the way to Damascus by Jesus and found salvation. I wonder how the rest of his life was impacted by that. Did he feel guilt for killing Christians? Was he ever able to lay it down and find peace. He says I am the worst of sinners and in his youth he was a Pharisee who followed the law as best as anyone could. When he was on his way to Jerusalem for the last time God sent a couple of prophets to tell him he was going to be arrested if he went. People pleaded with Paul not to go but he was determined to go. It is almost as though he needed to be arrested for being a Christian. Do you suppose he was looking for some justice for what he had done? We could say he needed to be arrested to bring the gospel to Rome but the gospel had already been in Rome. Priscilla and Aquila were Christians who had been kicked out of Rome long before Paul got there. Yes I know during the storm an angel told Paul he had to stand trail before Caesar so all the lives on the ship would be saved. God is always in charge but why did God keep warning Paul not to go to Jerusalem?
   So I wonder does our past haunt us at times because there is justice or is it the devil trying to tell us there is never complete forgiveness and a new start. Is the devil always trying to convince us we are just covering up our past.
We are all sinners saved by grace not because of what we have done or will do, but because God is a forgiving God. How should that impact what we feel about our past sins?