Dan Edelen at Cerulean Sanctum writes about the strange American tendency to constantly want to do something, anything, as long as we stay in motion:
One of the most neglected verses in American Christendom states:
Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
—Psalms 127:1 ESVWe bristle at the notion that we can’t do it ourselves. Yet look around at the expediency that passes for ministry in large swaths of the American Church and you’ll spy plenty of ministry projects in which the ministry built the house, God having little say in the construction. People will ooh and aah at the pretty thing that arose from nothing. Perhaps years later, the same folks will wonder why the pretty thing failed miserably. …
Talk to leaders in Third World countries, though, and they wait until the Lord moves. This idea of “God can’t steer a parked car” doesn’t exist in their Christian playbook. They seek God until he makes a way where there is no way. They don’t go around trying to dynamite doorways out of granite just to be doing something.
What a scathing indictment of our need to feel like we’re accomplishing something, whatever that something is and whether or not that something actually helps or hurts the kingdom of God.
One of the saddest examples I’ve seen of this was during a visit to an orphanage in Mexico. In the middle of the compound was a 10-foot-wide hole filled with muddy and moldy water, swarming with mosquitoes. It was an obvious health hazard and safety risk with so many small kids around.
When I asked the orphanage director what it was doing there, he said that another church group had come down a few months before. Without even asking him, they decided what this orphanage needed was a jacuzzi. So they spent an entire weekend digging the 4-foot-deep hole, then filled it with water and left. And we spent an entire weekend filling the hole back up.
The experience left me with a disturbing question: How many muddy, disgusting holes have I dug in my efforts to “just do something” for God?