Be a builder by Deon Crafford

Nehemiah 2:17-20 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.”

The second law of thermodynamics holds that time itself is asymmetric with respect to order of an isolated system, meaning: a system will become more disordered, as time increases. In short, since we are an isolated system – our being, our planet, our lives – order will become disorder, life will die, energy will eventually become zero. For those who follow after God, it is nothing new i.e. there is an end to all of this and the complete disarray or disorder we see around us, comes as little or no surprise. The world’s current fascination with renewable energy means too that it had finally woken to the fact that we’re running out or down. Yes, you may prolong our ability to generate energy, but there is no way – but for God – to restore order out of this incredible mess that we the human race had become.

So as we survey the brokenness and destruction around us, the ever deepening of social injustice, the attacks on systems of law and order, the increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots, the dismantling of conviction, the contamination of the foundations of our faith; what will we be found doing, or better still what would God desire us to be found doing? To survey it all in horror and angst or to be taking up the trowel and rebuild the wall in front if us? God’s desire is for His love to be known and experienced by every man and women walking this earth. For that to happen He will need builders, not observers.

So like Nehemiah, who was deeply troubled by the destruction of the walls of Jerusalem, that allowed for God’s people to lose their identity and be overrun by every other nation, tribe or whim, we need to be troubled. We need to be troubled that what was bought for all mankind by the precious blood of Christ, is being dismantled and destroyed by a hostile world. We cannot be observers, we have to be found building. And is this sounds far off, know that the greatest building material available to us is love. CS Lewis stated that love is never wasted, for its value does not rest on reciprocity.

Let’s be found rebuilding today. Let it be on us to reverse the despair, the isolation, the obsession with self and comfort, and let’s see how God’s purposes in this world be restored through His people.

Love to all