Fresh starts

The “Dynamite House”—the local ramshackle house whose basement cache of unstable TNT forced evacuation of our neighborhood two summers ago—is gone. Bulldozed into a splintery pile and clawed into dump trucks, the old house left us. Now a new one is taking its place. As I watch the progress, I think of how the Bible likened Christian growth to house-building. I also allow the process to remind me to pray for those who need to let go of “old stuff” (like the crumbling TNT of anger) and let Christ rebuild them from the ground up.
            “Unless the Lord builds the house,” says Psalm 127:1, “its builders labor in vain.” This well-known verse opens one of the “ascent” psalms sung by ancient pilgrims going to Jerusalem for worship. The first verse is well-known, but a closer study shows the psalm actually uses four common activities to teach how God needs to be at the center of all things.
            House construction (v. 1): We can move ahead on a project or dream, thinking we know it all, but forget to ask God’s blessing until it’s all done. The alternative is looking to Him every step of the way.  Little is much if God is in it, and, conversely, “much” is nothing without God. I see that in how my vocation moved from rookie newspaper reporter to Christian writer/speaker. Many agonizing, prayer-bathed changes marked the way.
            Security (v. 1b): “Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.” How thankful I am to live in a land of police and fire protection, just one 9-1-1 call away. But while God has permitted these agencies to be a part of our lifestyle, our ultimate security is in Him.
            Work life (v. 2): “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep to those he loves.”  This was a favorite verse of college finals week and parenting a sleepless, wailing newborn!  Seriously, the Bible does teach us that it is normal to work, and sometimes that requires long hours. After all, it’s called “work.” We’re to supply our own needs, those of our family, and those around us. But if we work without a thought to God, there’s an ultimate emptiness in what we do. As for the “sleep” phrase, that, too, is a gift from God. When we’re really tired, sleep is sweet.
            Family life (vv. 3-5). More than half the psalm is taken up with the blessing of family:
            Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.
            Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth.
            Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.
            They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
This verse needs to be understood in the context of early history, when jobs were labor-intensive (like farming or building). Having many sons meant many hands to support the family. (Though it’s not added, many daughters helped the mother on the home-side). It’s also assumed that those children are believers. Otherwise, they’d bring heartache and shame to the family, not blessing.
            An unbroken chain of godly families is not the norm.  But God is in the business of taking away the rubble and doing a new “build” on top:
            Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has come, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
            Before we know it, that house down the block will be done and a new family moved in. But I’ll still remember the old “Dynamite House,” and be glad that in real life, God does lead the way for fresh starts.

I don't live there anymore

My husband pulled to the curb, turned off the motor, and let me just look for a minute. The house where I grew up in a western Washington town was still standing and well-maintained. I noticed an older woman at the kitchen window. I can almost imagine her worried whisper, “Honey, we’ve got strangers parked across the street staring at us. Think we ought to call the police?”

No, I was just wondering if the kitchen still had that very dated gray and blue checkered tile. If the beast of an oil furnace was still there, with a short clothesline across its sunken room for quick-dry laundry. If the hydrangea outside my bedroom window still bloomed. If the fixtures in the main bathroom were still that ghastly green. I wondered how she’d managed to arrange furniture around an awkwardly-placed corner fireplace.

But I didn’t live there any more. My last time in the house was 1979, the year after my parents died, when I emptied it and repainted the blue/pink/mint walls a neutral ivory in preparation for selling it.

My trip back to Memory Lane (actually, 13th Street) came as a result of attending a family funeral “back home”—that of my sister’s 101-year-old mother-in-law. Besides the home where I grew up, I also found the tiny rental where my family lived a few months after moving from southern California. I recalled how our front-loading washing machine galloped all over its laundry room during the spin cycle. Eventually, Mom planned her washing around times my dad was home to sit on it. As my husband drove between that house and the school I attended in third grade, he asked, “Your parents let you walk home alone this far?” How safety concerns have changed!

It was good to see the “old places” again. But one thing the trip “back home” reminded me of was how careful I need to be to not dwell on the past. I’ve experienced “stuckness” at times in my Christian walk, and I know it’s because I fail to turn problems and disappointments over to God, then seek a fresh start in His strength.

Something I read in a book by counselor Jan Silvious, Please Don’t Say You Need Me (Zondervan, 1989), applies so well to anybody’s spiritual walk. Silvious says her counselees often want to go over and over why they felt they were wronged, and get stuck there. Instead, she says, they need to “move on to forgiveness, healing, and the creation of a lifestyle” in which damaging perceptions and behaviors are left behind. The apostle Paul put it more succinctly in a verse I’ve claimed in moving away from hurts of the past: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). Jesus died to cover the past and to call me into a fresh and growing relationship with Him.

In other words, I don’t live in my “past life” any more. God doesn’t want me to stay stuck in old habits of blame and fear. He has new plans and joys for me if I’m willing to stretch out of comfort zones to discover them.

By the way, about twenty years ago on a family trip to Disneyland, we took a side trip to the suburb where I lived from infancy until third grade. The little two-bedroom was tidy, its front porch still painted brick red. But graffiti filled the neighborhood and my husband was nervous as I dashed out of the car for a quick photo in front of the house (that's photo at the top of this column). I’m thankful I don’t live there any more!