A couple of months ago, a semi-truck delivered a massive load of bricks across the street. A few days earlier, the framers and roofers had finished their jobs and the windows had been installed. It was time for the bricklayers. A new house was being built in the place of one that burned last year. The new house is two-story and pretty large, so there were a LOT of bricks. The bricklaying crew arrived and they started with the very first row. Day after day after day, I’d watch them work, but they seemed to gain very little ground because of the large scope of the job. The area to be covered was just so great and the bricks were just so small. The guys would work a full day and, from my shady front porch, it would look like they’d made a very insignificant dent in the formidable work to be done. In addition to size of the house, they had so many corners, windows, and doors to navigate. From where I sitting, it was painfully slow work and it seemed like the final result would never be achieved. 

Last week, I passed a highway crew at work. Nobody likes to see those orange signs and a long line of taillights indicating road construction ahead. I’m always perplexed at the painstakingly slow process of building roads and highways. The projects are long and winding and the end is never visible. Day after day, month after month, those people work on their lengthy projects in small half-mile increments. There are so many layers and steps to finishing a road. When they’re done with one small section, they just move on to start it all over again, so they can gain just a little more ground. Again and again and again. Mile after mile after mile of work to do and progressing just a little stretch at a time. The end goal is always somewhere out there beyond the horizon. Out of sight and seemingly unreachable. 

I have to say I really admire the people who can do those types of jobs. Maybe that’s why I notice them as they work. I’m amazed by them. Those people who can work so faithfully for weeks and months and years and still remain so far from their finished project. We’re all wired differently. I don’t know if it’s my self-diagnosed attention deficit or just my restless and impatient nature, but that kind of work would drive me absolutely mad. Maybe it’s why I chose work where I could make a lot of visible progress in one day and look back and get some sense of achievement from my obvious headway. If I feel overwhelmed by the impossible magnitude of a task, I’m more likely to throw in the towel long before I’m done. I don’t really like that about myself, but maybe there are a lot of us who are that way in our work life and our spiritual life, too. 

As Christians, we’re kind of feeling that way about the world these days. I know I am. Surely, I can’t be the only one. If you’re not, you must live in a hole and I’d love to come visit you there. Here in my town, we had a harsh reminder, last week, that hit really close to home for me. A reminder that we live in a world that’s sick with sin and there’s nowhere we can go to run from that. It’s not about our zip codes or street address, because there’s not a nook or a cranny anywhere that evil hasn’t found to trespass. This was also just another indication of how long and deep and wide the issues are in our society. The problems are massive. They stretch on and on and on. One broken thing leads to another broken thing which feeds another broken thing. Sometimes, even our “solutions” create more problems. Homelessness, crime, drugs, moral decay, lack of personal responsibility, government dysfunction, family breakdown. If we listed all the challenges, it would be as overwhelming as paving a coast to coast highway or bricking a skyscraper. 

It’s easy for us to see problem stacked upon problem, throw our hands up, and declare the whole thing is useless. It’s just too much. It’s too far gone. It’s more work than we can handle. Even if we worked day and night, we couldn’t make a dent so why bother. It’s tempting for us to just walk off the job. 

When we’re overwhelmed with what’s going on around us, we can only do what we know to do. Jesus hasn’t returned for us, which means it’s not quitting time yet. No matter how discouraging the world is, we have to keep doing what we know to do. Go, teach, love, share. One brick at a time. “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9 If we persevere even when we feel like we’re not making any progress, He promises results. Our efforts will not be in vain. “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of faith.” Hebrews 12:1-2 The answer to every one of our world’s problems is Jesus. There are so many people who just need Jesus. If they only knew how He could change the trajectory of their lives. “But how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them?” Romans 10:14 

God, help us to keep on doing what we know to do. Even when. 

JONI