Under Construction

Under Construction

I’m a work in progress. What comes out of me under pressure is not always what I would wish. If you asked a certain group of city employees working on my street, they might swear there’s no way the lady in the little gray house is a Christ follower. Their doubt could be traced to the witness of my midafternoon meltdown when I returned home to a front yard and driveway that looked like a bomb crater. With no warning at all, the city had decided to replace the sidewalks on my block and had dug them all up in the middle of the day, leaving a three-foot-wide gap nearly a foot deep across my driveway—when my car was parked in it!

A call to the city’s 311 line yielded a six-digit report number and nothing more. So I braved the 107-degree heat and walked a block and a half down the street to where I flagged down a city employee on a bulldozer digging up another driveway. I threatened, begged, and threw a small fit, demanding that he do something to fix the mess he’d created. “Do you care at all that you’ve made it impossible for me to get out of my own driveway?” I asked.

“Lady,” he said, “my boss just said, ‘Dig the hole.’” By then I had calmed down enough to realize the stupidity of angering the only person in sight who might solve my problem. So I took a deep breath and asked, “Then do you think I could ask you to fill it?” And he did. He took his bulldozer, filled the hole in my driveway with dirt from down the street, tamped it down, then garnered two more workers with shovels to smooth it out. When they were done, I just said, “Thank you,” and went inside.

My front yard is still a mess, and the sidewalk isn’t poured. The job is not done. Jesus isn’t done with my heart, either. I’m under construction, as surely as the sidewalk in front of my house. What comes out of me is what’s inside—and what’s inside isn’t always pretty. All the digging going on here just proves to me how much work remains.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.

Psalm 19:14, KJV