Is Your Faith Built on a House of Cards - or Something Stronger?

Do you want the pressure of worrying about your house of cards?

"²⁴ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. ²⁶ And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

----Matthew 7:24-27, ESV

Today we celebrated the last day of school before Christmas by letting the kids at my school play 'reindeer games;' kids were allowed to go from station to station, no particular expectancy of time or direction (other than following school rules), and we did it by grade level at the middle school. Needless to say, there was one boy in particular, whom I happened to observe, who ran over and sat down at the UNO station, barely attaching himself to a circle of girls who had started playing a game of UNO. The girls thought he was strange, and wondered what he was doing there, but they let him plant a seat real close to them, and they just kept playing. It turns out, there was a method to the boy's madness.

The young man waited, and waited, but did not give up, because he had his eyes on the cards. And sure enough, the girls got bored with the game, and all got up and left at the same time, leaving our young man with nothing but a stack of big UNO cards. And the young lad had a mission. And so, he set himself to work, meticulously placing and balancing one card after another, building a structure with such careful precision. He leaned two cards against one another, and then placed an adjacent leaning pair next to the first pair. Then he carefully placed one card as a roof and corresponding flooring for that particular level of a soon-to-be house of cards. He repeated the pattern several times, and overlapped cards where he needed to, until he eventually had a towering house of cards, as tall as he was. One thing I thought was endearing as he was about to place two remaining cards against each other to complete the house's peak, was when the boy placed the cards under his arm for a moment, bowed his head and closed his eyes, and motioned the Catholic cross, before topping the structure off. Then he leaned the last two cards against each other at the very top, ever so carefully. When he finished, he walked around the structure and danced a proud dance of accomplishment, stopping people in their tracks as they came close, just to admire his handiwork.

Now mind you, all the while, there were kids running and sliding by on the gym floor, kids walking back from the bathroom, kids transitioning to another game station because they grew tired of the one they had just visited - and our little man would do the familiar stopping gesture with a hand if someone strayed too close to his work without realizing how close they were to a 6th grader's marvel! And as he built this house of cards, and completed his work - the words from Matthew 7 came to mind. In many ways, unfortunately, our young friend's house of cards represents the house built on sand referenced by Christ in the seventh chapter of Matthew.

What do I mean?

While many Christians claim to be faithful, and come quick to the defense of their faith on the surface, especially when someone disparages the name of Christ or the Christian faith in the name of the world - many of those same people will have very little knowledge about the faith in which they speak. They will not be well-versed in the Bible, and they only know the basic premise of something like the Gospel message of John 3:16, but they do not have enough context, historical or otherwise, to connect those words to grand issues in society that have become hot topics and buzzwords in today's world. They end up jumping in front of their house of cards, holding out that hand gesture that is universally understood to mean 'stop, get back,' somehow knowing that all it will take is just the right push, or rush of air, or hard enough touch, and the house of cards will come crumbling down. Have you met some people or been around some other believers who had a brush with atheists or people of another religion, whose efforts to stand up for their beliefs fell flat, because they just did not have the foundation in the knowledge of their own faith to stand against whatever threatened those beliefs?

But let's change the boy's situation. What would it have to look like, for that boy to not even feel like he had to stand in front of others, to protect against collapse?

What if we gave the boy tools, hammer and nails, and wooden planks? What if we gave him stone to stand against itself? What if then he could fill some of those empty spaces between panels of whatever hard substances with a hardening material, to make the structure itself more solid? What if our genius builder suddenly had a structure that he no longer had to worry about defending, that would stand up against the thickest crowd of fellow students dancing to 'Church Clap' or Macarena?

It turns out, our faith can be that strong, and can stand up against the most controversial seeds of doubt, planted by naysayers. Notice how in Matthew 7, Jesus also mentioned the house that was built on the rock. The term firm foundation comes to mind. And what, pray tell, could that firm foundation be?

"The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever."

-----Isaiah 40:8, ESV

If you want your faith to be built on the strongest of foundations, and of the 'toughest stuff,' why not build your faith on the rock? The Word of God - the words of the Bible itself, are the very foundation of everything in existence. THAT is what you want your building materials to be. That is what you need to shape your belief. That is something worth believing, and worth standing up for. I challenge you to take up reading your Bible as often as you can. Read it so much, so often, that its words are etched in your heart. I challenge you to never again be like our kid who built his house of cards, at least, not when it comes to your faith. The young man accomplished a grand feat, to be sure; one that obviously caught the eyes of his school resource officer.

But I want my faith to be much stronger than any house of cards.

Food for thought, and Merry Christmas everyone.

----- JEF