B U I L D I N G A H O U S E

This is my friend Sein. I met her in an art class a few years ago and ever since then she has been a little ray of light and joy in my life. Whenever we hang out, we always get into good heart talks about where God is taking us and how we can live better lives for Christ. A little while back, Sein and I were talking about tattoos that mean something or display your "life message" and talked about what we felt were our life messages. Sein explaining her life message really stuck with me. She told me there was a quote by C.S. Lewis that God had spoken to her through:

"Imagine yourself as a living house. god comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominable and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation in that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wind here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."

The idea that God is willing to build us into something a million times better than we imagined blows my mind. But Sein added something to this passage I had never thought of. She said she believed that God wanted to break apart parts of the house he was building her into--break parts off so that bits of her  experience and growth could be used to build up God's work in other people. She knows that God will use parts of her house to build his other houses. Usually, I'm pretty focused on what God is building in me. I mean, it's awesome to see what God is doing in other peoples' lives, but do I ever ask God to take parts of what he is doing in me to build up his work in someone else? Thinking about what Sein heard from God, that he wanted to break her to help others, and seeing how willing and ready she is for him to do that in her life, really got me thinking about the importance of relationships, and how blessed I am to have the people God has put in my life. I have to admit that relationships and investing in the people I have in my life isn't always easy, but maybe without them, we miss out on seeing not only ourselves being built on, but other people too. Maybe if we allowed ourselves to be broken for the work of God, we could see a kind of domino effect-- God working in us, in our friends, in their friends, and so on.

God is always building, through every experience and circumstance. Even when we can't see it, he's making us into something better and new.