How to build yourself a basement
The house had been abandoned. Left alone and derelict. Windows and doors had been boarded up, not cleanly with sheets of plywood but with random slats and planks, crossed and crisscrossed, nails and screws haphazardly pounded and bent, screws at odd angles and stripped heads. Pity the fool that ever takes on the challenge to remove them.
And yet there he stood, “the fool” with a tool Kit in one hand and the deed in the other. He looked long and hard at the old place. He walked around it slowly looking it up and down. Taking note of every flaw and failure. The longer he looked the more his expression changed. When he first arrived his expression was serious, even concerned, but as the mental list Of all the repairs grew, the corners of his mouth began curling up, up and up
Until At the End of his survey and tour he was smiling, smiling a broad smile and he even began to whistle a soft tune, as he hit the chorus he began singing softly as he ran his hands over the siding of the old house, the dry cracked paint crumbing under his calloused And scarred hands, “yes, Jesus loves you, yes Jesus loves you, yes Jesus loves you, the Bible tells you so…”
This is the introduction to a book I hope to write some day. It will be an allegorical tale of redemption and rebuilding.
The house described above is me before Jesus came into my life.
Building abasement is a play on words. A basement, the lowest part of the house and also the foundation – abasement, the practice of humbling ourselves. The life of following Jesus is upside down from the world and it’s structure. In Following Jesus the greatest among us has become our servant. The king of kings washes our feet. The prince of light and life died for us plunging himself into death and darkness.
The house described above is me before Jesus came into my life. It is also can be you. And we can enter this process and be rebuilt by the creator…of everything.
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