He Looks Pretty

Have you ever toured a historic house to relive a bit of the history and lifestyle of people from days long passed?

I love them. As a child, I remember visiting a few and those memories rank near the top of my favorite childhood travel experiences. As a wife, I've dragged my husband through far more than he would care to recount. He just likes to break the rules in that type of place by playing the piano, or ducking under the velvet rope, or taking photographs, or touching the furniture, or…

I adore the architecture. The history moves me. The antique linens and books woo me. I am in awe. This makes history come alive. This is what life was like. But I can see it with my own eyes. I can touch it, almost taste it. Stepping across the threshold of a home built a century or more ago is as if I've stepped into a different time. As if I'm present with the house, with its people.

Sadly, many of these homes have been polluted with things that have changed their welcoming nature, like red velvet ropes and signage that displays the rules, modern amenities and replacement furnishings that hail from the period, but whose history don't belong to this house.

 These houses have been reshaped into something having a form or likeness of the original, but lacks the original beauty, charm, presence. People have added and taken away from the matchless beginning of what once was and often, the heritage seems lost. It doesn't seem real.

But I'm not satisfied with the average tour. It just leaves me longing for more. 

I want to roll back time and explore these places unfettered by the velvet rope, throwing up the wavy glass windows to feel the magnificent cross breezes for myself. I want to unfurl the bed linens and curl into the bed with an antique book and while the afternoon away. I want to punch down dough in that old wooden bread bowl in the kitchen. I want to sit on the back steps overlooking the garden, quiet, to daydream. I want to explore and discover the home's treasures and secrets, maybe hiding places, or secret passage ways. I want to know the life of the home as it was. Not as it's been recreated to be.

 I don't want to stand on the other side of the velvet rope. I don't want to see the house made up into something it never was intended for. I don't want to be told I can't go up the stairs or that I can't take pictures. I don't want to be ushered through in a hurry when all I want is to linger, lost in the past of that place.

This is how I want to know Jesus.

I want to love him for who he was when he walked ancient dirt roads, when he made people whole by his touch, when he taught the masses through common storytelling and shared bread, when his robe was simple homespun. When he was real. 

I don't want to know him clouded by religion, parted from history by the distance of time and the fabrication of man. I don't want to know Jesus as my culture and society tells me of Him.

In truth, I think I want to know him in the same daring, unafraid way my husband visits these houses. I want to unhook that velvet rope designed to only let me see him, to get close, but not close enough to touch him…and slip gleefully right into Jesus' arms. Much to the dismay of stuffy curators, perhaps, but to his delight, for certain.

Jesus hasn't changed. We've changed him. We've made him into many things he is not. 

But he looks pretty, right?