“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”
–Matthew 7:24
During my childhood, our family lived in five different homes. For those of you who spent your entire growing-up years in one place, such frequent re-locating might seem strange or even suspicious, but for me it was mostly fun as each house had its own special character.
One home had a laundry chute which stretched from the top floor to the basement. With five children in our family, you can be assured that architectural feature was used for dropping items other than dirty clothes, including on at least one occasion, my younger brother! Another home had a dirt crawl space that became my not-so-secret getaway and the place I liked to conduct science experiments, including a personal favorite of making homemade gunpowder.
Yet the house with the most unique trait was the one where I spent the longest stretch of my childhood. I suspect it was built on top of a spring. We didn’t realize it at first as there must have been ample rainfall in the weeks preceding our initial walk-through, but after moving in, we discovered the house was quite responsive to the weather. If we had an extended dry spell, one corner of the house would settle just a bit. A crack would appear in the mortar and pictures on the wall in my sister’s room would hang at an angle, but after several days of rain the crack would disappear and the pictures would once again be straight. My mother tried to have the problem fixed once, but the next time dry weather returned the cracks did so, too. As far as I know, that house is still one of the most unusual rain gauges in that part of Georgia!
Recalling that home makes me think of a moment when Jesus taught a lesson using the image of a house’s foundation. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them,” he said “will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” In the parable, when the storm came the house stood firm. In contrast, was the fictional individual who built his house on sand. Harsh weather brought a vastly different result. “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell,” Jesus said “and great was its fall!”
Despite having been raised as a carpenter, Jesus wasn’t offering advice to contractors. Nor was he speaking about the risk of building in a known flood zone. Instead, he was commenting upon the wide variety of things upon which people can build their lives while warning of less stable choices..
Perhaps the most familiar foundation for human beings is to construct one’s existence around work. An individual’s self-image or sense of importance, identity or self-worth can be completely wrapped up with how their vocational life is going. For others, the foundation is their family or sports team, their health or political party. To be sure, all of those components can add meaning to life, but when they are the foundation, potential trouble awaits.
As jobs get downsized and promotions go to others. Families go through challenging seasons and teams inevitably will go through slumps. One’s health can be compromised in a blink of an eye and elections always result in winners and losers. The reasons that such things and countless others do not make for an enduring foundation is that they are based on human beings who will always be imperfect in their actions.
Thus, Jesus advocated for a different basis in life. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock,” he recommended. To be sure the human element comes into play again with how we interpret his words and how well we act upon them. Yet when the inevitable storms of life come–and they will–there is no better foundation for you and me.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Amen.
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