On Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe, the star and narrator, travels the world serving in some of the most back-breaking, grungiest work one could ever imagine - jobs few of us would ever consider taking, even for one week.
Mike reminds us that our jobs can tire us, frustrate us, and even slime us. Yet, our work can also make us feel most alive: being creative, building, and serving. Some of my most gratifying life moments come through hard, focused work in which I produce results and construct things, visible evidence that my life matters.
Recently, a friend reminded me that it’s in our DNA to build, construct, work, etc. And that everyone is trying to build, establish, or construct something. Whether it's their career, a relationship, a reputation, etc. We're all putting something together. It's ingrained in us from an early age. My parents use to say, "You gotta work hard to make it in this life, because no one else is going to do it for you."
My kids love to build stuff with Lego’s, they construct all kinds of things. Sometimes I recognize the stuff they're building, and other times I just don't have any idea what it is unless they tell me. I wonder sometimes if God looks at the crap were slapping together, often in an attempt to try and impress him, and wonders what in the hell it is and why were building it to begin with?
Nowhere, in all of scripture, is this more apparent then the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). Granted Israel's intentions were good, but constructing a tower to reach God when he's already made himself completely available is absurd. Those living in Babel got together and began making plans to construct something that would make them famous. The tower they were constructing would be so high that people would see it from miles away. Brick by brick they built this massive tower.
The Bible tells us that God came down to see the tower and the city these people were building. He saw a people taken up in their own power and name, and disappointed scattered them among the nations. In the process of constructing this tower they'd lost sight of God's power and nature, and had become obsessed with selfish prosperity. They'd become so busy building a name for themselves they no longer had a need for God.
This story from scripture and my comments are not an argument against construction per se, but rather a suggestion for our consideration that how we build and what we build matters!
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved-even though only as one escaping through the flames." [1 Corinthians 3:12-15]
Some of the things we create might not have as high a probability as others of showing up in the New Creation. Their actual identity, either through the process of being created or in their final state, may be so at odds with God's character, they will have to be transformed into something else for them to make it through the "refining fire." Even if the stuff we create appears to be functional for God’s Kingdom, the spirit in which they were made or offered might soil their eternal utility. The Tower of Babel serves as an example of this. God was not impressed and frustrated Israel’s efforts by scattering the people across the earth and confusing their languages. Both city and tower, likely impressive structures with both aesthetic and functional value, were tainted by bad motives.
At the end of the day, the question we all must answer is WHY we’re invested in the construction of __________________, cause where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
