You're Starting to Look Like a House

“Mom, I’m about to be homeless. Can you and Dad help me?” 

The voice on the other end of the line was a child I had prayed for for years. This was not the first time they had asked to be rescued. It was not the second or third time either. My husband and I had dished out more money and time and vehicles and advice than I cared to remember. We had rescued them over and over again, and every time we got a call from our wayward child, we let our hearts believe this was the moment when everything would be different. But this time, we knew that we could not rescue this prodigal, and that every time we tried, it was pushing them further from the One whose rescue they needed. 

So I answered, “I’m sorry, honey, but there’s nothing we can do to help.” Then I hung up the phone and wept.

And as I wept, grappling with the heartbreak of this present reality, I was reminded of something my husband had said years before. He was counseling an older woman who was tearfully relaying the mess her life was in, summing it up with the words, “I guess I didn’t turn out too well.” My husband had stopped her and countered, “You haven’t turned out yet.” And as I interact with so much brokenness in my life, so many unfulfilled hopes for my children, I often think about the truth of those words, “you haven’t turned out yet.” 

Because sometimes Mother’s Day is a day when I am tempted to forget the gospel hope I have for my children. 

It is a hope that is always before us, a hope that God sees the reality of even when we can’t. I know this because God says in Isaiah 49:16, “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” It’s rather ironic that God would say this, because the ESV study bible points out that Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians and lay in ruins at this time. But God was not focused on the mess the city was in. He wasn’t focused on what was. He was focused on what would be, for he knew his intent to rebuild it. 

And building is something I kind of get, because for 30 years, our family was in the home building business. It takes a lot of vision to build something that you can’t see, and there is this moment in the process when it can all seem like a colossal blunder. It’s called leveling, when the builder prepares the site for the masterpiece. Once, we purchased a lot with a quaint cottage in the middle of it. It was a serene picture, that little cottage surrounded by green grass and towering trees. I stood in front of it that first time with the whimsical thought that a little “tlc” might make it the ideal home. But then I walked through that little cottage, smelled the mold that was hidden beneath its carefully sheetrocked walls and observed the rot barely concealed by wooden floor boards. So the bulldozer came, splintering wood and tearing up roots. It was a sort of horrific scene to drive up to that first time, the trees now positioned like sentries around a fresh grave. I looked at it with a sense of dread, remembering the once serene cottage, wondering at the necessity of the now scarred ground. 

I have often taken this approach in life, smelling the stench left by sinful choices, seeing the leveling of God’s loving intervention, and reacting with a sense of dread. 

God’s loving leveling was apparent in my child’s life on the phone that day, but if I could build a beautiful home that would rise up from the ruin of that little cottage, how much more can God, who loves our children much more than we do, build something beautiful from the present ruins that are sometimes all that we can see (Isa. 61:3). I know it is not the path we had imagined for them. When we were knitting tiny sweaters and cradling them during 2 am feedings, the prayers we prayed and the dreams we dreamed were far removed from this present reality, this reality of utter brokenness and shame. 

But as Charles Spurgeon said, “The old man is not sent to the hospital to be healed, but to the cross to be crucified.” The bloody death of that “old man” can be a dreadful thing to behold, and we can forget that God isn’t finished yet.

There is a longstanding joke between my husband and his brother. Every time we would build a house together, after the framing was done, one of them would exclaim, “It’s starting to look like a house!” There it was, a vague outline of rooms, a mere skeleton of what would be, but by this stage, you’ve labored and planned and spent so much money and time that surely, you think, the thing must be almost ready to move into. After years of building houses, I know the finished product is a long way off, and that, sometimes, the house takes shape by leaps and bounds, suddenly rising out of a pile of lumber, a figure against the sky that didn’t exist just days before. At other times, it is slow, tedious work- a plumber laying pipe or a carpenter carefully shaping an angle on a single piece of trim. I can get frustrated with the process, thinking that I should be further along than I am, that my children or spouse or friend should not still be struggling with this same sin. But just as a lot of time goes into the construction of a home, so it does in the construction of a life. 

For he sees the beginning and the end, and he knows that the correct placement of a single electrical outlet is planned long before the foundation is ever laid. 

Just as a lot of contractor boots trod through the unfinished project, bringing with them an expertise in particular fields, so God is constantly bringing different people and circumstances into our lives, their skills particular to what he is accomplishing in our stories at the time. It’s comforting to know that every birth mark was perfectly placed by the Creator, every eyelash intentional. The master builder knows how to form each house exactly as he intends as he takes what Satan means for evil and uses it for good (Gen. 50:20). 

As I think of my prodigal on Mother’s Day, I am reminded that today is not the culmination of what will ever be.

Today is what is. I can pray and weep over it, knowing that God is ever close to the broken hearted, and that he who began a good work will be faithful to complete it. In his mysterious time, he draws us and those we love in ways we do not understand. From a well of infinite beauty, he is fashioning with hands of infinite grace. He is creating from an imagination of infinite wisdom. May we say with the Psalmist, “Wonderful are Your works; my soul knows it very well” (Ps. 139:14).

Where we see ruins, God sees walls. You’re starting to look like a house, but God isn’t finished with you yet.