I don’t know if you’ve ever walked through a construction zone but they can sometimes be tricky to read. I’ve come to believe that architecture is its own kind of language.
Growing up around construction I look at it a little differently than most people. My childhood was marked by cement bricks and rebar, pouring foundations and laying tile. I have to really press my mind to remember a time when Dad wasn’t building a church here or there, reinforcing this or developing that. Interspersed with my recollections of swimming in the ocean and flying to boarding school are memories of digging gravel and shoveling sand for a hundred different construction projects.
Since we’ve been home in Senegal, Elise and I have been elbow-deep in serving our team in construction. Our new house has a small one bedroom way-station apartment that our team has joyously outgrown. When teams visit from America, or one of our families working far off comes through Dakar, we find ourselves bursting at the seams. And so it seems that our new wine needs new wineskins (Mark 2.22).
To expand our little hummingbird of a guesthouse required us to channel our inner Chip Gaines and smash through walls, run new electrical and move water pipes. And, as will always be the case when dealing with past construction, the more we opened the more surprises we discovered. Beams that needed replacing, walls that need reinforcing, doors that needed raising…
As one of our teammates walked through the controlled chaos of what at one time was a living room, she said, “It’s like a tornado came through!”
That’s the wonderful pain of growth. That’s the joyous challenge of change. We all want a stronger future, a solid framework for our lives, but in pressing forward we sometimes have to take a sledgehammer to our lives.
Benoit, my dearest friend here in Senegal called me last week letting me know that he’s been asked by the national church leadership to take the pastorate of a church four hours in-country. My heart rejoices in the security and new opportunities for my friend, but my heart grieves in the distance it creates. Our time in the States built an anticipation to get back in the trenches with him here in Dakar. I just dedicated their firstborn son they named after me. We’ve sharpened one another and challenged one another (Proverbs 27.17). Could I even begin to count the hours we’ve prayed and planned together? And in a moment, I’m now planning to drive them to their new home in a few days.
It is so easy for us, once we see the first chunks of concrete break off the wall or hit the first setback, to say, “Maybe we don’t need to do too much. Maybe we should just patch that up and keep things the way they’ve always been.” But when we do that we miss the hidden joys that breakout in our pain and the growth we never thought was possible.
How wonderful to know that our Lord has a plan for Benoit and his family, filled to overflowing with hope and a future (Jeremiah 29.11), What great joy to believe that His ways are higher than mine (Isaiah 55.8-9). The best I have for my friend is like a small, outdated, one bedroom apartment when our Father, who gives gifts from his abundance, has so much more for him (Matthew 7.11).
High on the pile of discarded rubble that we once called an apartment wall that stood for sixty years I found a shell in the concrete. Somehow, in the midst of the mixing, grated against gravel and course sand, a whole shell snuck its way into our old construction. There, in the dirt and dust of the past was a shell, a symbol of pilgrimage itself, just for me.
As great as our vision is for Senegal, God’s vision is far beyond our wildest thoughts or imaginations! As incredible as our aspirations for a life-giving, rapidly multiplying church network in Dakar is, it pales to the future and hope God has laid up for the future. Jesus is ready to take the water of our obedience and pour out the richest wine of God’s abundance (John 2.1-11).
I pray that today you will see God’s hand working in your life. And I pray that together, as we follow Jesus on this pilgrimage of obedience, we will see shells in the concrete that promise an increasingly redeemed and transformed Africa!
