Life Building
“You are God’s building…”
When hospital visiting, if at all possible, I prefer parking on the street, to winding around in dark, claustrophobic deck labyrinths. So, as many times before, this Friday, with quarters in my pocket for the greedy meters, I found a place to park.
Getting in some steps, I walked to see one of our church members at UAB Hospital…an institution of which I am much impressed and deeply thankful.
There was a bit of a kaboom above me. I looked up in time to see a huge cement funnel shaped bucket being craned away, I suppose to be refilled and returned. There seemingly perched in midair were three construction high-wire performers.
First thought: I don’t know what they pay those guys, but whatever it is, it is surely not enough.
Next thought: I wonder if it is just another day of a hot, gritty job to pay the bills. Or if it crosses their minds, they have a hand in building a place that saves and prolongs lives. Maybe at some point me or people loved by and known to me. For sure people unknown to me, but who surely love each other just as much.
I was impressed but realized I was not exactly sure what those construction acrobats were doing. I thought of expert builders who could tell me. Jim Lott of blessed memory could have, and Jeff Stone thankfully can.
So later in the afternoon, I texted the pictures to Jeff and asked what they were doing. Simple, direct answer: ‘pouring a concrete column.’ I guess these vertical wonders extend down to do their part to form a sure foundation.
In the synchronicity of things, it happens that I am reading Bill Bryson’s AT HOME. In the course of giving the background of an 1850 built house he bought in northern England; Bryson tells of an amazing building in London that was begun in 1850 for a world’s fair, “The Palace of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.”
The Crystal Palace as it was called covered 19 acres of Hyde Park – that would hold four St. Paul Cathedrals. It was 1851 feet long matching the year of the event – that’s six football fields to me. Plus 408 feet wide and 110 feet high.
In contrast to brick-and-mortar construction, the Palace was constructed of a skeleton of 33,000 iron trusses and walled and illuminated by 293,655 panes of glass. (For more, get Bryson’s book or quick trip to Google.)
Well, the walk to the hospital and the book got my brain zig zagging.
Zig: for sure I will pay closer attention, appreciate more the structures that house our lives, along with the keen minds that design and skilled hands that build them. Wow!
Zag: I got thinking about showing up at Canterbury Church 20 years ago. I was fast-tracked tutored into the initial ambitious expansion and renovation plans by the then Building Committee Leader, the above-mentioned Mr. Stone. (an apt name for a builder, don’t you think).
Most everything present then would be amazingly, almost unrecognizably renovated as the sanctuary had just been. New Children’s Building, Parking Deck, Canterbury Center and more would come over the next few years.
To build such requires raising much money and both require a vision. Pretty soon it struck us that THE building project of the church was something described as Building Lives, not just buildings.
One phrase was ‘Building Christ Centered Lives of Faith in God and Service to Others.’ The expanded, improved structures were the physical base for the main thing of helping people and families build such Christ-centered faithful, resilient lives worth living and dying for.
Ever since then, the conviction - that churches, warts and all, can be places where beyond our own doing grace empowers imperfect people like us to build durable, compassionate lives for the best and worst of times - is at my core. (Don’t ask me to diagram that sentence.)
There is so much detailing out of what this means for the way we do our work, serve in the community, prepare the next generation, reach out in healing reconciliation to people broken by each other in this world. That and more are for another place, indeed, places.
For now, only faintly fathoming the physics of building buildings and perhaps a bit more understanding of building lives, the image of vertical columns and horizontal beams comes to my mind.
Columns reach up from firm foundations and cause us to look up. Yet they are not of much consequence unless they are laced, lashed together by the beams. The synergy of the columns and beams creates a strength neither have alone.
Okay, here goes the preacher. Our relation to the God we know in Jesus can be experienced as the columns of our lives reaching up to and grasped by God who guides and secures us.
Our caring reaching out to others can be experienced as the stabilizing, forward-carrying beams of our lives. Amazingly, these horizontals can be enskinned channels of God’s grace that hold us together when we would otherwise fall apart.
From such columns and beams we see the cruciformity of our lives, reflecting God in Jesus reconciling us to God and reconciling us to each other.
**********
God, down deep we know how far, far your grace has to reach for us. Give us the grace and guts to reach farther than ever to one another, plus the courage as long as we are breathing to keep building and rebuilding our lives. And bless those guys hanging off buildings. Amen.