I recently bought new furniture for my front sitting room. I found the exact sofa I’d been dreaming of for sale on Marketplace, and after a few other potential buyers in line ahead of me declined, I was able to purchase it and pick it up. I was thrilled! It fit perfectly and I even found two beautiful cabinets also on Marketplace within the next week to complete the space. I jokingly renamed the room “HBD” because the new-to-me furniture and completely overhauled space ended up being a wonderful birthday gift to myself.
Previously, there were three oversized armchairs awkwardly angled in the corners of the room. While they were beloved and wonderfully comfortable, they did not create an inviting space for guests to convene and converse during larger gatherings. But I had to get to a point where I was ready to say goodbye to those chairs. They were 20 years old and we’d been through a lot together. I had selected four of them with my first home purchase in 2005, and placed them strategically throughout the house. One in my bedroom, one in the living room, and two in the upstairs loft area; all located near windows that let the sunlight in at various times of the day. They were places of physical comfort during a season of my life that was both beautiful and hard. Those chairs and I bonded through books, prayers, visits with friends, cups of early morning coffee, afternoon naps, and glasses of weekend wine. While they are mere furniture, those chairs were an ebenezer, a visual reminder of God’s faithfulness in my life and specifically, for how my adult faith began. As I dreamed about this sitting space, in a different home, in a different stage of life, back in the city where I grew up, I was finally “ready” to let those chairs go.
In my mid-twenties, I moved out of state simply to try something different, and I ended up staying in that city for fifteen years. During that time, my Heavenly Father did some mighty maturing in me, his daughter.
Just a week after moving there, my first new friend invited me to her church. The pastor “happened” to be teaching a sermon series through the Apostle’s Creed. I grew up reciting that creed every Sunday, but this was the first time I’d heard each line exposited through the Scriptures. One sermon in particular affected me deeply and became a pivotal turning point in my faith. The teaching was on the line of the creed that reads: He is seated at the right hand of the Father. The pastor told a story of working in the yard with his three sons. As young boys do, they would get distracted and tired of the chores, and he would have to motivate them to keep going until the work was done. He’d say to them, “Why are you sitting down? You’re not finished yet.” He used this visual to remind us all that Christ is seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly realm (see Luke 22:69, Colossians 3:1, Ephesians 1:20) because his work was finished. His death on the cross was the perfect sacrifice that satisfied the required restitution between God and man. Nothing more was needed. No more works and no more work. The finality of Christ’s offering pierced my soul like a pointed spade and planted a seed deep within me. This truth would take root and establish a strong foundation upon which my faith would grow for the rest of my years. The Holy Spirit had taken up residence in me, and from that point forward, he would be my teacher, comforter, corrector, and close friend.
Over the weeks, months, and years of the next decade and a half that I lived in that home and that city, I would meet with Jesus in those chairs, studying his words and talking through prayer. Through a long season of singleness, I prayed and waited for companionship. All the while, my most important relationship, the one with my savior, Jesus Christ, grew stronger. I grew up, spiritually, in those chairs.
When I moved back to my home state, I was living with my family in a season of transition. Most of my furniture was in storage at that time. While the basement was pretty much mine, I didn’t find a space quite like the ones my chairs and sunny windows had offered me, and I realized how much my body had craved that rhythm. All those times, whether a few quick minutes or lingered long hours, spent sitting with my Lord, had formed a muscle memory in me, both physically and spiritually. I needed to sit with him. The Son of God, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, was also ready (and waiting) to sit with me. Anytime. Any place. That familiarity had become a precious part of our friendship. Not only was he the one who had suffered, died, and resurrected for me 2000 years ago, he is the one who hears me, knows me, sees me, and meets with me. He is set in the heavens, yet he is close. This is Jesus, who is both my Lord and my friend. It is my delight to sit with him.
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Colossians 3:1 NIV
When I settled in my current space, the front sitting room was the first room I set up. I placed two of those chairs by the sunny south-facing windows with a table in between for my books, Bible, and coffee coasters. While Christ is present with me always through his Holy Spirit, it was a wonderful feeling of home. All of my senses were engaged and aligned, partaking in this humble habit of sitting with him. The cushions welcomed me and remembered my form. I meditated on all the work the Spirit had accomplished within me through the many years, while I had simply sat still. His work on the cross was finished. The moment I realized that was just the beginning of his work within me.
The room now has a new look, but the rhythm of my relationship with Christ remains. The refrain from the old hymn “In the Garden” (C. Austin Miles, 1912) sings:
And he walks with me, and he talks with me
And he tells me I am his own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known.
I might personalize it to sing “and he sits with me.…”
There was a bonus happy ending to our time together, those chairs and I. After offering them up for free on a public site with no takers, a friend of mine saw my personal post and shared that she was converting a grown child’s bedroom to her new prayer and reading room and she would love to have them. How perfect! Many prayers uttered already within their arms and many more to come.
–Colleen
Let’s Talk About It: What physical space or object in your life has served as a sacred reminder of God's presence and faithfulness—and how might God be inviting you into a new rhythm with Him in this current season? Let us know in the comments below!
About Colleen:
Colleen Ingram is a mid-western wife and SAHM to an inquisitive toddler. Writing happens in stolen moments of sanity and solitude and is most often her own pensive theological ponderings put into print for others to read too.
Follow her on Instagram: @devotedcolleen
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