When I was six years old, my best buddy, Randy, and I decided to build a fort. We searched for the needed tools and came up with one, a shovel. That provided one option: an underground fort.
We dug and we dug until we had what we believed to be a massive hole. But we had no roof. So we scrounged the neighborhood until we came up with enough discarded boards to lay across our massive hole.
Job completed, with exuding pride in our work, we climbed into our fort. I suppose to await the savages who might futilely attack us.
First, by virtue of our knees touching as we sat cross-legged, we realized our fort would be most comfortable for two toads. But we were too tired to do any expansion.
Since we couldn’t see outside, how would we know whether it was day or night? How would we know when to go to sleep? The first question was kind of superfluous because it was perpetually night in our fort. As for the second question, we would have to sleep while sitting cross-legged from each other, a skill neither of us had acquired.
After five minutes sitting in our fort, Randy said, “How about we go pop bottle hunting?” He could have stopped at “How about we go–.” Yes, let’s go.
It was a smart decision. We could collect two cents for every pop bottle we found and turn that into candy at the local store. Our underground fort could never match that return.
Randy and I never returned to that fort. For all we know, it’s still there awaiting a reunion with us. Or someone built a Dollar General on top of it.
Psalm 127:1 reads thusly: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it…” It would have been nice to know that before Randy and I started our underground fort.
Let’s go larger. I don’t want to say God isn’t interested in underground forts; however, it’s probably a small tittle in the margin of His legal pad list.
At this point in my life, what have I built? Most importantly, has God been a part of anything I’ve built? Let’s begin with my marriage. April would agree with me: The success of our marriage could not have happened without God’s involvement. We’ve worked through numerous bumps and bruises, but our faith and growth in our Lord has led Him to creating a strong marriage ‘house.’
Outside my marriage, has God built anything substantial in my life? I’ve done teaching, coaching, acting, banking, fundraising, exercising, writing, eating. Eating? Well, it’s kept me alive. That’s a plus. But I don’t know if He’s been active in building any of these chapters.
But what would God desire me to engage with Him in building? What would He be 100% in with me being a part of? That answer is found in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Every life is a build of some sort. We witness people who build lives of sorrow and pain in drug addiction and alcoholism. At the other end of the spectrum, we witness people build earthly empires only to hand them off when they pass from this earth. In Ecclesiastes 1:2, the Preacher shouts, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
God provides a better blueprint—His blueprint. Let’s allow Him to build within us a life of boundless faith, a life always compassionately attuned to those around us who are less fortunate, a life always seeking to add one more person to His eternal kingdom, a life steeped in love for others.
In some ways, my vigorous attempt to build an underground fort mirrors my other endeavors in life: teaching, coaching—you get the picture. But once you focus God-led endeavors on the people who come into your life, God begins a fabulous build.