In three days for about $3,500, we will build a house for a woman in Maneadero. We call it a house but most of us wouldn't recognize it as one. There's no running water. Just two rooms, no dry wall, just a concrete slap for a floor. We probably mistake it for a shed. But then, what is required to really make something a home. It's not really about fixtures and furniture, window treatments or an indoor toilet. It's about what's inside, who will dwell here. It's a house and not a shed because people will live here and their lives will bring it dignity and honor. Their joys and sorrows, love and prayers and memories made here, will give it meaning. A house is crafted of lumber. But its the people within who make it. It's our hope and prayer what we raise here in three days will be more than a house -- that it will be a home and that the love that built it, the love that raised the money for it and the love that inspired the crew that constructed it -- the Love of God -- will always fill it and pour out its door to flood the neighborhood that surrounds. God also raised up something in three days...well, actually someone and through that someone we all have an eternal dwelling with Him.
Building this house also has purpose in addition to what it will mean to the people who live here. It's an opportunity for us to serve, to work together, to learn a little bit about what it takes to build something and in the process learn something about ourselves. Thank you, Brother Steve Waldron, for leading this process. We thank you for your expertise but we also thank you for your patience, for taking the time to instruct young people who might not have all had the chance to hammer a nail or raise a wall. Thank you for the confidence you inspire in them and the sense of satisfaction that they can all share in for having made something of value and use for someone other then themselves.
We're as much the project here as is the construction of a house. It serves as another means of helping us appreciate our chapter for this week -- Ephesians 2.
"For we are all God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10
"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers but fellow citizens with God's people and also member of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit." Ephesians 2:19-22
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| The surrounding neighborhood we're building our new house in. |
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| Our very own wonder women. |
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