KEEP BUILDING: A New Year's Meditation

"Then Judah said, 'The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.'" ~Nehemiah 4:10

Some Bible verses are full of joy, but this one is full of discouragement. The details are that Nehemiah, a Jewish man living in Babylon, had moved to Jerusalem. The year was around 445 B.C. The city of Jerusalem had been conquered, burned, and destroyed in 586 B.C., 140 years earlier, and it had been lying in ruins ever since. 

About 70 years before Nehemiah's time, a different group of people finished rebuilding Jerusalem's temple (a whole story in itself). But the actual city had remained pretty much uninhabitable for all those decades (Nehemiah 7:4). Now, though, with Nehemiah's encouragement and leadership, the people living in other Judean cities had joined in to repair the city walls.

Almost immediately there was opposition by those who did not want to see Jerusalem prosper. Through mockery, ridicule, insults, and outright aggression they tried to stop the workers. In response, the builders prayed to God and kept right on building.

The verse quoted above, though, was a different sort of danger. It's one we all face. There was literally 140 years' worth of rubbish and rubble that had to be removed if the project was to continue. I know what my office looks like after only 14 days, so I can just imagine what 14 decades of disarray would be like! The workers of Judah said to themselves, "There is so much junk around here that we will never actually be able to build anything."

Are you saying to yourself, "There is so much damage from the past that I just can't move forward"? Maybe this last year really took a lot out of you. Or maybe you have been dealing for years with other kinds of damage, and now you think of yourself, others, and even God in some type of way that is filled with doubt.

Listen, that damage is real. It was real for Nehemiah's builders. They were not exaggerating about how much garbage was around. But it was time to talk back to the garbage. They had to stop letting the garbage mess up all their good efforts so far. They had to stop letting the garbage tell them what to do and what not to do.

It was going to be exhausting work. Building always is. But those builders persevered in the end. It helped when they focused on God and on each another (Nehemiah 4:14). They saw that the garbage of the past did not have the right to prevent Jerusalem from becoming what God intended it to be.

The garbage of your past does not have the right to stop God from strengthening you to become what He has always wanted you to be. It's going to be exhausting work. Building always is. But keep building.