The Rebuild

Where do you begin when it’s time to rebuild?

We moved into an older house not even a year ago, and the most daunting thing to tackle for us, we knew, would be the back yard. We couldn’t wrap our minds around all that needed to be done. The yard contained decades-old cinderblocks, vines, roots, rocks, pokey bushes, wires, old fence post cement masses whose job to support the old fence ceased to exist years ago.

This Spring we began the rebuild.

The restoration of old homes, yards, buildings has its value, to be sure. It will always involve the removal of things that don’t have any life left in them. Things will look worse before they look better. If someone came right in the middle of the renovation and wasn’t privy to the plans to restore it could look hopeless and beyond repair.

I think that it can seem the same way about things in our lives or the lives of our loved ones if we only look at what we can see right now. Prayers can be prayed for years only for it to seem as if the answer is further away than ever. 

As I stood those months ago, overwhelmed, looking over our back yard and wondering where to begin, I realized what had to be done. There wasn’t any way to plant or add anything on top of all the disrepair that existed. Our attempts would have failed, even if the temporary result looked pretty. It might have seemed like we were making progress, but the problems would still be there underneath all the things that looked good on the surface. The only option was to remove it all and start over, to rebuild something new.

After everything was removed, I could see so clearly where to go from there. Our yard has gone from disastrous to lovely.

God is at work rebuilding broken places even though they might look untouched or even worse off than before our prayers. 

Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. Psalm 127:1

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  Ezekiel 36:26

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

The work of the heart belongs to God.