What Will You Build With Your Life?

This is Notre Dame. It took almost 200 years to complete. The architecture is nothing short of magnificent. Reflecting on what it took for this edifice to materialize, I was awestruck. Generations of people toiled. Whole families were born and died without ever seeing it finished. I imagine on that first day when the first workers started construction on it, they did so knowing that no one they had ever known nor anyone their children would know would ever be prayed for in this hallowed space. And even more history would forget that they ever had anything to do with bringing this marvel to fruition.

And then on April 15, 2019 what took 200 years and thousands of lives and generations to build was almost destroyed in hours. How humbling is that? And yet, that is the way of everything that has time as a main ingredient. Which, of course, is everything in the phenomenal world whether it is a relationship between two people, a company of thousands, or a concept such as democracy. This is human vulnerability. And it is built into all we come in contact with.

When we forget this, we do so to the detriment of our own conscious awareness. Creating under the illusion that anything that you do can last forever and under all conditions is to build on denial of the very thing that makes us human—the awareness that nothing we are a part of will last. And yet, we must give this life everything we have.

Considering this, I am reminded of the Romero Prayer by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, who composed it in honor of the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, who died in service of the people of San Salvador. It reads:

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.”

What will you build with your life?

Ecclesiastes 3:11
God has made everything beautiful in its time. The Creator has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.