Building

My dad is a contractor, so I think this whole 'building' thing is kind of ingrained in me. I've been around unfinished houses, shelves and remodels my whole life. I've also had the privilege of not only seeing the unfinished product, but also the polished, beautiful, final product.

Even though I have been around all of this my entire life, something dawned on me recently about building that I never realized before. I was out helping my dad at a house he's building, and I stopped in the middle of what I was doing for a few moments, and surveyed my surroundings. It was, quite frankly, a disaster. There were makeshift 'tables' that had been set up to collect whatever junk was lying around, tools and cords were everywhere, nails, sawdust and metal piping had their place on the floor. It definitely didn't look very appealing. But, I know enough about the process of building a house to know that one day, it will be gorgeous. It always is. And I always sit there in awe, of how what looked like such a mess, became a beautiful home.

Its so funny to me... I think God speaks to me when I am out in nature more than anywhere else. Maybe I feel a sense of freedom that no other place gives me. Maybe its the beauty. I don't know, but every time that I go to the country, I feel like I hear such vivid truths from God. This time was no different-- God spoke quietly to my heart, and he reminded me that that house looked like a disaster, and, it was a disaster, but, that is not the end. That house was slowly being changed, built, added onto, and one day it will be breathtaking.

So it is with our lives, or maybe the lives of those around us. How often do we get discouraged because we see someone in what looks like a hopeless situation, and we just give up on them? Or what about ourselves?? Sometimes we're our own harshest critic. We look at our lives and all we see is how far we still 'need' to go, but we fail to see how far we've come. We fail to realize that we are still a work in progress. Things might look messy, or disastrous, or ugly, but God is not through working in us yet. In fact, He won't be through while we're on this earth. Honestly, that is one of the most encouraging things to me. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses...

Philippians 1:6--Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ.

YESSS! Is there any promise better than that?! I am SO glad that my God does not give up when things look ugly and grim. He is outside of space and time, and He can see the 'final product' even when all I see is the messy present. What an awesome God He is!

Photo credit: tcarterministries.com