Extreme Makeover Comes to Town

The Extreme Makeover TV show has drawn a thousand volunteers to a construction site on the southeast side of Colorado Springs. Sunday, October 7, the popular TV show will hand over the keys to a newly constructed spacious house to the Woodhouse family. Right now the flurry of activity swirling around the site is rivaled only by the constant swirl of prairie dust.
The Jeremy and Kim Woodhouse were selected to receive the “big house on the prairie” because their daughter has special medical needs that incur huge medical bills. She cannot feel pain, and she must wear a space-age cooling vest to keep her body’s temperature at precisely the right level.

Gloria and I visited the Extreme Makeover project this morning. We have a special interest in the project because Jeremy is the assistant pastor at a church I served a few years ago as interim pastor. Looking east, we saw what appeared to be an endless stretch of sandy soil and light-brown prairie grass. To the west, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains rise like a jagged wall marking the end of the prairie’s domain.

We stood across from the house alongside about one hundred Air Force Academy Prep School students. The students were being summoned to the construction site fifteen at a time to carry clutter to a disposal site. Not a very glamorous job, but the students seemed to be happy doing whatever Extreme Makeover asked them to do. Each received an attractive blue shirt for participating in the project.

The Bible features an extreme makeover. Second Corinthians 5:17 indicates, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” You and I may never receive a brand-new house constructed and donated by big-hearted construction companies and a large cadre of volunteer workers, but we can lay claim to a brand-new life offered as a gift and made possible by the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross. He shed His blood for us. If we believe on Him as our Savior, God removes our sins and grants us everlasting life. But there is more, He promises us a home in Heaven. Someday the family of God will live there, and its comfort, convenience, and security will outclass anything Extreme Makeover builds down here—and that’s saying a lot.

“The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23b).