This week my team has been working around the compound that we live in. We have been doing all sorts of manual labor such as leveling ground for a new building and cleaning out trash around the building. Today we did a job that was tedious and seemingly pointless. We started with a pile of rubble that was made up of pieces of a broken brick walls. We proceeded to take hammers and chip off the mortar that was holding the bricks together. You couldn’t hit to hard or the brick would shatter, you couldn’t hit too light or there was no progress. I easily spent 10 minutes working on one brick. I was growing frustrated as I was working in the hot sun and pieces of brick were flying everywhere. I spent what seemed forever cleaning off one brick that was near perfect. The brick had very little damage compared to many others in the pile. As I am working on chipping off the last remains of the brick I hit it a little too hard. This brick that I had been spending so much time of shattered. This is pointless, I was ready to give up and go buy some new bricks for the building so I didn’t have to spend any more time in this sweaty pile. But God had a different plan. As I sat there staring at the shattered brick God started talking to me. My life is like this pile of bricks. I spend so much time pouring myself into different situations. I saw every brick in this pile as the trials and problems I have dealt with in my life. While each individual one seems insignificant I spend so much time sweat and emotion working through each one. All my focus is on this one brick, this one problem that I need to make perfect. But God wants to use the shattered pieces. Every broken piece in my life God was planning to use to create an even bigger structure. God said to me “These bricks are the same Terin, they are going to be used for so much more than you know.” Every tedious hammer fall and every drop of sweat are building the kingdom. God is going to use every part of it. The big moments and the small. The significant moments and the seemingly insignificant, He wants to use them for His glory. I may not ever see the wall that is made out of these bricks but I know that they are going to build a room where God will be glorified for years to come.
