Assessing the Foundation
Images of flattened neighborhoods and wood splinters strewn along the coastline where gracious Southern homes once had stood were etched in my mind. As Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coast of Mississippi and Alabama, it annihilated everything in its path.
While listening to the familiar story from the Bible about the foolish man, I began to reflect on my childhood. In His description of the foolish man, Jesus says:
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.1
As the writer highlighted the outcome of the foolish man’s house, the words “it fell with a great crash” riveted my attention. Like the foolish man, my childhood family also built our house upon the sand, or an unstable foundation. Instead of obeying God’s guidelines, we ignored His words in the Bible. Although we went to church, we didn’t make Jesus part of our daily lives.
My Story
When I was 19 years old, my parents finally divorced after 24 years of marriage. When I asked them why they divorced, they answered, “A break down in communication.” One day I had a family; the next day I didn’t. Seemingly, overnight the storm decimated my family.
When the torrential rains of life swept into our home and the gale force winds blasted against it, our home collapsed. And my family suffered. After the storm, we looked like splinters of wood scattered across the sand. My father left my mother. I left for college. My 16-year-old brother moved in with another family. My 12-year-old brother was enrolled in a boarding school. And my mother lived alone in an empty house.
In contrast, the Bible describes what happened to the other man in the story. Jesus says:
Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like the wise man who builds his house upon the rock. The rains came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.2
In His incredible love, God began to restore my broken family members who wanted to rebuild on a new foundation. And over the next few years, He even showed us how to reconstruct our lives, utilizing a different foundation. But the renovation didn’t occur overnight.
My Application
Daily, I decide which foundation I will choose—either Christ’s or my own. When I snap at my children, fantasize what my life might be like if I were married to another man, or gossip with my daughter about someone that offended me, then like the foolish man I have chosen to build my foundation on the sand.
Likewise, if I apologize to my children, resist imagining my life with another husband, and stop gossiping with my daughter, I will make a decision to build my house on the rock of Jesus—the only solid foundation.
Although a storm of Katrina’s magnitude doesn’t come often, the foundation I chose will still be important. One day when another big storm does come, the foundation I have chosen will determine the outcome.
For more, check out A Resolve to Believe transcript and video on True Woman
As my boys are doing their Bible Study Fellowship in the other room, my house is as you call it enduring the “Michigan Spring” with the ice, wind and rain, this very moment. What a remarkable mental picture you have created for me as the word is being spoken (Grant is reading it RIGHT now)and the weather outside is what you talked about in your scripture to us today…..love it!! Thank you so much for your words to us …your honesty….but most of all your presence in my life…our lives. We are so lucky to have you!!!!