4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:4-6 ESV
The playground is finished.
It took three months.
The instructions said it would take 10 hours.
So the above scripture verse has always reminded me of construction work. God was the builder just hammering together structure after structure. My husband worked a couple of years building decks and garages. He learned very quickly to do the same tasks over and over again.
You see repetition in most new homes now in how they are completed in a matter of months. Construction projects in neighborhoods often go up with the ease of a plan that is repeated over and over again with cookie-cutter precision and predictability. Measure twice; cut once. The project is built and you move onto the next one.
The playground kit we purchased should have been exactly the same way. This is the same design as hundreds of other playgrounds in the USA with pre-cut cedar pieces and all. They are labeled, pre-drilled, and ready to assemble.
But we lacked time.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to it right away so some of the yellow plastic pieces of the yellow twisty slide warped. Also, we had to build it in-between life happening and children having drama. We started it together, but only could get so far before the kids were going nuts. For some reason, children lose all sense of rational independent playing ability when their parents are lifting massive wooden structures to bolt together.
Then we did what we could over the next month alone as each of us had time, but the roof had to be lifted by both of us and the yellow twisty slide needed to be put together by two people. Apparently, these were designed to be built by people who didn’t have kids, for kids to play on. I’m not sure how that would work.
Really, most of the kit wasn’t very hard if we could give it our full attention. We were scrambling around putting pieces together like a life-sized jigsaw puzzle… and then taking some other pieces apart, before reading the instructions and then putting them back together correctly. You know, the standard stuff.
The yellow twisty slide… because according to my oldest son, it MUST have a yellow twisty slide… was what my paternal grandfather called a multi-beer project. It didn’t want to be built. If my husband was a cussing man, he would have been cussing over the yellow twisty slide. Just mention the experience and you’ll see the color change in his face from the memory.
The slide required major tugging and pushing by both of us to get the bolts in, and still, a mallet, clamps, and pliers had to be brought in. If it wasn’t for the sake of our children who were already playing on the swings and straight slide, the project would have been abandoned. Was a slide really worth this effort?
We did eventually finish.
It turns out all the pushing and tugging made the slide have an internal force to hold together for years to come.
As I reread the above scriptures, I realized my life hasn’t really been the easy-to-build, cookie-cutter house I had originally imagined. We are all unique people with no two of us having the same life experience or purpose. God didn’t create a kit that each of us messed up. We were designed to be different. You might be a cute sea-side cottage. Your neighbor might be a log cabin in the woods.
My life has been more like the yellow twisty slide that required tugging and pushing, with an extra dose of patience. I tend to be stubborn and do things my own way. I get obsessed with certain battles and care less about who I hurt on the way. I am selfish. I am prideful. I am sinful. If I would submit to God’s hands, it would be easier for him to complete his work in me. Still, I often think I know better. Have you ever been there?
This verse is not talking about unbelievers or even new Christians. We expect those lives to be messy because they haven’t given the hammer and drill of their lives over to God yet. These verses, though, are talking to those who are partnering in ministry, a church full of Christians. These are mature Christian who God is still working on after many years. Why isn’t God done working and building in their lives yet? Shouldn’t the leaders and teachers be all that we are eventually going to be?
No.
We aren’t finished until Jesus comes back. As long as you are alive, you are a work in progress.
We just bought our house in which this playground is located less than a year ago. My husband complimented me on how much I have done to our new home, but I have so many more ideas! For many creatives like me, projects don’t end, they just give birth to more projects. I like to think of God as the ultimate creative since he, like, created everything. He is making beautiful things in our lives during the entire length of our lifetime.
The nice thing about realizing that I’m a yellow twisty slide sort of project is that the wrestling has a purpose. God could easily break me. He made me after all. He could have designed the world without tension like the squeaky metal swing set I had as a kid. The kind that rocked dangerously if you swing too high on it and forgot to anchor it. The kind that got rusty and the bolts got loose over time. That swing set took about a hour to put together and died by the time I left childhood. But with the braces and pressure in the cedar playground we built, I expect our grandkids will be able to play on this thing!
Pressure in this design is part of its strength. The tight ring braces create a safe environment for my children. The screws and bolt will hold over time. The wooden braces keep the structure from rocking and swaying. This thing held two adults crawling all over it to build it and it didn’t budge.
God isn’t in the business of making fast and sloppy lives. The struggles in our lives has a purpose, and God will stay with us until the very end, until he is done. Oh, the joy that will be! As I watch my children play on the new playground, the temporary struggle of the yellow twisty slide means nothing now. They play in safety on a structure built to last. The joy they, and perhaps their children will experience makes everything worth it.
Hang on! You are being built to last. It will be worth it.
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