I’m the kind of guy who always strives to have the best life
can offer and to be the best he can be. Now this may surprise you a little, as
I’m also the kind of guy who drives an old Toyota and wears scruffy jeans, and
is quite happy about it too. I guess this is because what I consider to be the
best isn’t always what everyone else might think of! I don’t worry too much
about cars, or clothes, or well-paid highly esteemed jobs. I care more about quality
relationships and developing better character. And I don’t think that this is a
bad thing. The funny thing is though, that whatever you strive for; good, bad
or indifferent, there’s always a temptation to continually want more and want
better. This in itself once again is not necessarily a bad thing, but wanting
more should never get in the way of you enjoying and making the most of what
you have. Today God spoke to me not through an hour long sermon, but through a
simple one sentence quote by A. W. Tozer; “when a man has met God he is not
looking for anything because he has found it”. When I stumbled across that this
morning, I realised that whilst it is good to try to be better and to do
better, I will never have anything better than what I already have in God. I
really should live like it too.
For the last couple of weeks I have been helping to make
foundations for an extension to a building. We use the analogy of building
foundations a lot in our everyday life, whether it be about relationships, or business
projects, or anything else. But having now helped to create actual foundations,
I think from now on it will have a deeper meaning. The most striking observation
that I have made of the process so far is the seeming absurdity of the whole
thing; you work really hard to dig out a big hole, then you work really hard to
fill it back in again. And at the end of it all, nothing much seems to have
changed other than all your clothes are now redecorated in cement.
There are two things to note from this. Firstly, building
foundations is hard work! Like really hard work! The second is that whilst it appears
like no progress has been made, it’s just that; appearance. The work which has
been done is hidden, but it is no less valuable or effective for it. It can be
quite disheartening to put in all that effort and see very little change and
yet in reality what has been achieved is the most important work and determines
the effectiveness of everything that will follow. Unless you clear out all of
the rubbish underneath well and dig deep enough, and then fill it properly with
good quality cement, all that is built upon it will suffer and most likely
ultimately fail. How often in life do we feel like we’re just going around in
circles and making no progress at all? I wonder how often in those situations
maybe we have made great progress, just our work has been hidden. I also
fearfully wonder how often I caused future trouble for myself by not working diligently
enough at things that I could not instantly see the fruit of.
