Watching the Wall Go Up

Outside of my office window I get to see many things. There are lots of trees full of changing leaves that I can watch shift from rich green to reverent gold. In some of those trees are squirrels gathering their acorns for the long winter ahead, their spastic movements constantly surprising my watchful eyes. Amongst those austere gray columns of bark and limbs there is a parking lot that I can watch cars come and go and wonder about the people driving them. Where have they been? What part of life brings them here? Across that parking lot is a construction zone cut off by a stern metal fence and caution tape. Every morning people file past that fence to work through the wilting heat of summer and the slicing cold of early fall. Some of them arrange metal while others fasten that metal together. But my favorite to watch are the ones laying bricks.

There’s a fascinating hypnotism to watching brick masons at their trade. I’ve learned this from more moments than I’d care to admit of being distracted from my tasks by watching them lay brick after brick after brick. The methodical stacking of bricks back and forth along a wall might be more satisfying than stopping a gas pump exactly on the dollar without having to play the nozzle-spasm game.

As each brick goes into its newly fashioned location, it is nuzzled ever so carefully next to another. If one brick is out of place, the entirety of the wall is thrown off. A little too close or a too far away from neighboring bricks and the wall is no longer structurally sound. If the mud underneath the bricks isn’t layered just right, the parallel lines of the wall would soon look like handwritten notes on unlined paper…a visual disaster.

As each of those bricks goes into its permanent place on that wall outside my window, I’m drawn more and more to pay attention to what it takes to build that wall. Each brick is equally important as the others and must be placed exactly where it should be for the project to be successful. What if our lives are like walls?

What if moments in our lives are like bricks in building? Each moment in our life was carefully and artfully arranged to support those happened before it and coming after it. Yesterdays promise becomes today’s memory, which leads to tomorrow’s fulfillment. Our lives are the culmination of these moments, the final product of our own divine craftsman.

Before any brick mason worth his trowel gets started, I’m sure he has an idea of how the finished wall will look. Before God ever got started crafting and creating each of us, He already knew the many plans and paths of our life. Watching our lives take shape is like watching that wall go up outside my window. In the hands of skilled craftsman, those bricks are arranged ever so carefully to create this beautiful piece of architecture. In the holy hands of our divine creator and builder, the moments of our lives come together to form a beautiful testament to God’s love for each of us.