be built

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.
(Is 60:1)

Do you some­times nearly despair of life and these wicked times, think it all ought to be dif­ferent? Remember that you are not in charge. It is a cre­ation by our loving and all-pow­erful Maker, so every­thing has its sense, even today’s suf­fering, not because our Cre­ator enjoys it, but because it is nec­es­sary for us to become what we are meant to be. Lift up your gaze, down­trodden slave of the system. It’s tem­po­rary. Yes it’s messy, and awk­ward, and not what it should be. No you’re not okay. Not per­fected, still searching, still strug­gling, still depen­dent. The biggest lie is that this is the final state.

A little soul-searching exer­cise: in your not-okay-ness, would you con­sider your­self more of a pris­oner, a wreck, or a con­struc­tion site? Or some­thing else?

• pris­oner: caught in schemes bigger than your­self, a victim of unfa­vor­able cir­cum­stances, per­ceived not to be in charge of your fate. This is the “inno­cent pris­oner” type; besides this you could also dis­cern a guilty pris­oner: victim to a self-cre­ated / self-inflicted mess. How­ever, this is quite sim­ilar to the “wreck” described next:
• a wreck: yes there are tal­ents and there was a pur­pose or at least stabs into mean­ingful pur­suits, yet they fal­tered and you went astray and now you are working on get­ting back on track and moving again.
• a con­struc­tion site: work going on and nothing going per­fectly, but all more or less as it should be, and with the right man­age­ment, snags will be addressed timely and openly; even with infe­rior man­age­ment, things will even­tu­ally get sorted.

All these per­cep­tions have their jus­ti­fi­ca­tions and dan­gers, but the con­struc­tion site is arguably the best overall. It is mul­ti­lay­ered – you can feel like sev­eral of these at the same time.

Maybe you appear bal­anced and calm but inwardly you’re screaming – i cer­tainly do, often. Maybe you appear bubbly and teeming but inside, hollow like a zombie. Whether or not there is some­thing is deeply wrong in your life, and you need help, this one thought may still help: dis­ori­en­ta­tion and dizzi­ness can be normal on a con­struc­tion site. Maybe there’re no rooms yet, no win­dows, no rail­ings down­ward from high storeys.

There is this famous C. S. Lewis quote:

“Imagine your­self as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, per­haps, you can under­stand what He is doing. He is get­ting the drains right and stop­ping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not sur­prised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abom­inably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The expla­na­tion is that He is building quite a dif­ferent house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, run­ning up towers, making court­yards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cot­tage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Do you believe that you are sup­posed to be a temple, not a shed? Do you believe that what’s missing between you becoming a palace or remaining a shed is your faith in your Cre­ator’s calling? So let your Cre­ator build, who formed you in the womb and built you thus far. Stand firm, as far as you have been built – Ex 14:13, 2 Chr 20:17, Ps 46:10. I’m just reading Mac­cabees, the apoc­ryphal books. Though not canon­ical, very note­worthy, with plenty of heavy relying on the Lord for deliv­er­ance in fierce bat­tles. Just one example, 2 Mac 11:6-10. Believe that you are not alone, that you matter, because you are believing, not because you are able to fight and fear­less, but because you become ready to fight and fear­less because your Cre­ator is with you and guides and sup­ports you and wants you to go your way through life with an aware­ness of this, so take courage.

Maybe what feels like a prison cell may turn out to be just the base­ment of your con­struc­tion site, where it’s dark and murky, as dirt gets washed down and water stag­nates. But it can change to a water­tight, clean and lit plant room accom­mo­dating func­tioning machinery. What you may per­ceive as wreckage may just be a hiccup in the con­struc­tion process, a nec­es­sary change of plans, adap­ta­tion to changing circumstances.

The goal could be to remain in “con­struc­tion site” mode as much as pos­sible, as this allows the per­spec­tive of devel­op­ment and poten­tial, towards ful­filling a pur­pose, beau­ti­fully designed, func­tional or humble, but at least intended by an intel­li­gent designer.

In pris­oner or wreck mode, your gaze will be back­ward – what could have been, had i not ended up in this place, what went wrong. Con­struc­tion site mode turns the gaze for­ward and upward.

Pris­oners and wrecks tend not to fight: there’s nothing to fight for if all is already lost. Con­versely, there’s every­thing to fight for, valiantly, if all is open still.

By Woj­ciech Stat­tler - Od starożyt­ności do współczes­ności - Malarstwo i rzeźba, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN S.A., Warszawa 2006, fot. S.Stachowski, Archiwum Ilus­tracji WN PWN SA
WARNING: Painting was mir­rored in PWN pub­li­ca­tion, con­firmed by National Museum in Kraków worker by phone. A.J. 10:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC), Public Domain, Link

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