Break Up The Crumbling Foundations

I’m not a fan of straight lines. Not in design, roads, or sidewalks. If I have to get somewhere in life, I’m taking the curvy, scenic route. I just don’t think that, as-the-crow-flies, is necessarily the best way to get to where I want to go.

Knowing this, you’ll understand why I hated my sidewalk. Slicing, razor-edged along the side of the house and racing towards the front door, it seemed to wickedly hiss, “Hurry up! Just get there!”  I used to look out the window and plot its demise. One day, I could stand that straight line no longer, and I grabbed the sledge hammer. I didn’t really think I’d be able to demolish it, but when I hit the cement, clunk.  A chunk broke off and crumbled.

An hour later, I realized a song was running through my mind, in rhythm with my swings… “Step by step I’m getting closer, little by little I’m breaking ground…”

Smiling, bound and determined to remove the line and replace it with curves, the working song kept me going. Then, a whisper interrupted my chorus…“Break up the crumbling foundations.” Well, that seemed appropriate, too, although I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Pausing to catch my breath, I was surprised to see all kinds of junk underneath the crumbling sidewalk: broken tile, glass, rags, hunks of rusting metal, re-bar, rocks, clay… a shoehorn! Who throws a shoehorn into a sidewalk?

I looked at the mess in disbelief, and heard the soft command again:

“Break up the crumbling foundations.”

Ah… I was starting to get it–to see the parallel–the lesson that a rotten sidewalk can teach the soul. Crumbling foundations are no good. Not in a building. Not in a sidewalk. Not in a life.

I was surprised that the concrete wasn’t stronger—that it cracked and crumbled into chunks of debris with the impact of hammer blows (a girl’s hammer blows), and I’ve been surprised when I’ve observed the, easier than expected, crumbling of people, too.

Sometimes, life hammers away at us. Without a solid foundation, there’s no holding up under the pressure. We crack. We break. We crumble. Deeply buried things get exposed and we discover what we’re really made of.

My sidewalk looked strong enough on the outside. But it wasn’t. It was weak because the concrete recipe was faulty. People do that, too; build lives using bad recipes. We might look strong enough on the outside. But when enough pressure is applied, we crumble.

Shards of tile and glass embedded in my sidewalk, cut when touched. What sharp, ragged-edged wounds have you buried that hurt when someone touches them? Broken promises, rejection, betrayal, abuse, dreams not realized?

I expected to find re-bar in my sidewalk, but not other odd hunks of steel and metal. I can only guess that they were thrown into the mix to strengthen it. How often do we do that? Throw something into our lives, thinking we’ll be the stronger for it, but end up getting trapped by a stronghold instead? What’s got a hold on you?

Beneath the concrete, the glass, tile, and iron lay rotting clumps of filthy rags. The moment I saw them, a verse came to mind: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. ”Isaiah 64:6

Self-righteousness. Self-works. Any and all efforts we employ to achieve righteousness are unclean in the eyes of God. Like filthy rags. And that hammer blow hurt. Because I was guilty and I knew it.

What’s the moral of this story? If we build our lives on anything other than Jesus Christ, we’ve got foundation issues. When the hammer blows of life hit, faulty foundations will be reduced to rubble.

Break up what’s crumbling and re-build on Christ, The Solid Rock.

PS: Even though I’m not a fan of straight lines (especially sidewalks) and I like to take the scenic route, there is one exception–when it comes to God, there are no alternative routes. There’s just one way… a straight and narrow path. His Name is Jesus.

Salvation Required a Lamb

“All we like sheep have gone astray, and turned each one to his own way; and The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

Isaiah 53:6

You learn a lot about animals when they’re dependent upon you: what they eat, how to shelter them, protect them, what their habits are, the characteristics of the breed, their vulnerabilities… 

For example, you might think that sheep would be easy to care for, but in my experience, they’re often not. Sheep are creatures of the flock. There may be a few independents, but generally, they are stubborn, easy prey, and driven by fear and hunger.

Heads down, grazing in slightly frantic fashion, they often stray–their insatiable appetites driving them to search for something more. Easily frightened, they flee, with no thought about where they’re headed. They just run… blindly crashing into fences, falling into ditches.

You see, sheep are prone to wander. They need to be cared for. Sheep need a shepherd.

The Bible compares God’s people to sheep. We too, can be stubborn, instinctually follow the crowd, (no matter where it’s headed) and can be driven by fear and hunger. We need to be cared for. We need a shepherd… one who understands our weaknesses, our needs, our character.

King David (who kept sheep himself) talked about a shepherd in Psalm 23. As Christians, we’re His flock, with all of the needs and vulnerabilities of sheep. But He knows what we require and how to keep us. He loves us, in spite of us. 

Because of love, He who cast a glance across infinity and created all things out of nothing, somehow forced His unimaginable greatness into mere flesh and blood, and became a shepherd. Because His sheep had strayed, and were lost, and needed finding. Because we were stubborn and needed saving.

But salvation requires a sacrifice.

So, Jesus, The Good Shepherd, did the unthinkable and became the sacrificial lamb. 

“Behold, The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”

John 1:29

Who is to Blame?

“Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds because of your evil actions. But now He has reconciled you by His physical body through His death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless...”  Col 1:21,22

I guess it’s human nature. When something goes wrong, something terrible happens, people suffer, die… We blame. Somebody. Something.

We blame, so we can process and then move on, so we can make sense of the world in a cause and effect, sort of way. 

We blame because justice requires accountability. Something in our innermost being feels that somehow, someone’s responsible and they need to be made to pay.

When evil rares it’s ugly head, we are horrified, heart-broken, appalled. In the effort to answer the question of, “Why?” even people of faith join the blame-game and point fingers. But presumptions about God’s judgment offer no comfort to those who’ve lost everything. Blame will not restore what was lost—who was lost.

Still, we’re blamers who’ve been blaming others for ages. In fact, the first historical record of blame involved the very first two people on earth. When all hell broke loose in their perfect Eden? Adam and Eve pinned their troubles on the devil and each other. 

We inherited a world of brokenness where sometimes, the weather goes berserk, nature goes berserk, people go berserk and do unspeakable evil.  Sometimes, innocents die while evil lives. What’s noble, and true, and beautiful, is maligned as false, and racist, and bad. What’s aberrant and manipulative and wicked is celebrated as natural and good.

Everything is broken. And someone should pay!

Incredibly, though He wasn’t at all to blame for the heartache and havoc, the berserkness and brokenness, Jesus stepped up, and paid up. In Full. For all of it: the corruption, the filth, the cruelty, the perversions, the lies, the unfaithfulness, the betrayals, the diseases, the death, the greed, the sin. He took the blame for me, for you. So we could stand blameless before God.

If you haven’t received Christ as Lord and Savior. What are you waiting for?