The Wall
February 19, 2009
I have piles of unfinished business in every corner of my life - on my desk, in my garage, in my yard, at my work, on my computer. They're things I started but never finished.
So it was the other day when my friend Billy came to visit from Texas. "What's that pile of blocks next to the driveway?" he asked. "Oh, that's a handball wall I'm building, or rather, that I started to build for the kids", I said.
Yes, many many weeks ago, actually last year to be more correct, I bought some blocks and told the kids I was going to build them a wall next to the driveway to play handball on. They were excited, I was excited. I cleared some bushes away, and mixed up some concrete and poured a 10 ft. long footing to build the wall on. I told the kids that by the next weekend the concrete would be hard, and we could build the wall and soon start playing handball on it. I intended to do this, but basically life simply got in the way.
There are deadlines at work, deadlines at school. There are things that break and need to be fixed. There are bills to pay, there are phone calls to make. The list goes on and on and on, and it seems like nothing's easy - especially this year.
Little by little the handball wall moved down on the to-do list, while item after item causing stress in my life moved up the list.
And so the wall remained just another of my started but unfinished projects, until last Saturday when Billy mixed up a bag of mortar, and the project came back to life. The kids dropped what they were doing, and pitched in to help. Jack came out of the house, and joined in the cause. For a few hours that day we forgot about all of the things in life that were pressing us from every side, and we simply worked on the wall.
I stopped for a moment on Saturday, and I looked at Billy, and I looked at the kids, and I looked at myself. We all had things we needed to be doing. We all had things in our lives that needed attention and were causing us stress, but we were all working away at something that would serve no purpose other than for kids to play ball against, and we were all having a great time.
It has been said that when analysing situations, we should ask ourselves - "What would Jesus do?" - "Would Jesus do that?"
Sometimes it makes me uncomfortable to think about that. "Would Jesus become and electrical engineer?" I'm not sure I can say yes, but I don't want to say no. I start to rationalize how electronics go into medical devices, and into machines that clean our drinking water, ..., etc.
When I ask myself however, "If someone were building a handball wall for kids, would Jesus pitch in and help?" Somehow this question is so easy - "Yes, without a doubt!"
-- Greg