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The most rewarding thing I did this week was toss a messy pile of roof shingles into a nasty dumpster. I suppose, as a pastor and writer, I should have something loftier to claim, a driving sermon, a thoughtful article. But not this week.
The pile of shingles littered the back corner of my small lot where a bathroom is being added on to our little house. I arrived, pulled on my gloves and bent over a hundred times. I shuffled shingles together into piles I could press between my hands to carry to the dumpster. The pile seemed to go nowhere at first. “More freaking work in vain,” I thought until. The pile eventually relented and dwindled, and then disappeared. Finally, I accomplished something. It was just a pile of shingles but at least it was something.
My wife, Kristy, and little girl, Josie, were out of town, having fled the chaotic condition of our home. Our dining room was a warehouse of marginally organized furniture, clothes, and random stuff from our kitchen, study and back bedroom. I was without a bedroom, so I slept in our small den on the pullout. This morning I took a shower while two construction workers were in working in our bathroom, not a place I want an audience. During the day I escaped the mess to minister, to prepare my sermon for Sunday, meet with people needing care, and checking my email an embarrassing avalanche of times to see if my literary agent likes my book idea.
I feel complete yet undone. I say that because as a person – husband, dad, pastor, perhaps even as a writer – I feel complete. But I feel my life is undone in the sense that it is on its way but hasn’t arrived. It is like living at a rest stop in the piedmont when your heart belongs in the mountains. At times, while falling asleep on the surprisingly comfortable pullout, I feel like I’m going nowhere while trying, quite purposefully, to progress. I wonder if in the mornings, after showering next to the construction workers, I should begin to blend a few pages of Purpose Driven Life sprinkling the bits of paper in with my fruit smoothie. I’m sure that will solve all my problems, just as the Prayer of Jabez got me a swanky house, flashy car, and cush job.
Hope implies waiting. You hope for things to come. That means you have to wait for those things to arrive. I don’t remember hearing in Sunday School that hope has a sucky side—waiting. I hate waiting on waitresses, cashiers, drivers, my wife, God. So in my impatience, even as hope attempts to rescue me, I fight hope like a drowning man does his rescuer.
I am not just hoping to publish a book that becomes so well read that young authors make snide comments about blending it with their morning smoothies. I also hope that people will get their lives together. That is the most tiring type of waiting. I hope that Chad will beat the porn addiction and Derek will overcome depression and suicidal thoughts, that Brian’s family would reconcile and quit being habitually broken. Yet even if they get their lives together, there are more people with more needs. There’s no end in sight. It’s a job of in-completion, of undone-ness, of hoping.
So Friday came and I was tired and frustrated. I looked back at the week and thought, “What did I do with these last five days? What did I accomplish?” As these thoughts were rattling around in my mind, paralyzing my heart, I found my work clothes in a heap in the dining room. I dressed and went outside to clean up some of the construction debris. I threw a few 2x4 scraps in the dumpster and it was then that I noticed the pile of shingles. So the task began. It was about my fourteenth trip from the pile to the dumpster when I realized something far from revolutionary but comforting to my frustrated heart.
Maybe this is why Jesus was a carpenter. I know in His divine nature He could see the end from the beginning, He could see the completion of ministry while in the muck of the process. But perhaps in His humanity He needed to see something started and finished on a given day. Every once in awhile, especially if you are a leader or dreamer or teacher, you need something to be completed and done. After all your effort you need to be able to look back and see a lawn mowed, some trashcans empty, a messy pile discarded, something constructed and completed. Sometimes you need a pile of shingles.
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