Psalm 127
For Sunday, November 11, 2012
Proper 27

My Dad was very successful in his business career as a banking senior executive in the days before “banker” became a pejorative. Yet as a college student I was concerned for him because I sensed him becoming a hostage to his own pride. I started praying for him the first line of this Psalm: “Unless The Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” I prayed, “Lord, let my Dad see that unless you become his builder everything he’s building will come crumbling down.”

My sophomore year at Indiana University (Bloomington) I had returned home over Thanksgiving break. At 10:00 am in the morning Dad’s Allen Edmunds dress shoes announced themselves on the kitchen’s linoleum floor. I knew immediately something was wrong. Dad was never home mid-morning of a workday. I asked, “What happened?” He said, “Well. . . I was just fired.” I thought to myself, “Lord, I wanted you to break his pride, but I didn’t want to get him fired!”

Then God gave me a word for the moment. “Dad, I’m so sorry, but maybe this is a great opportunity to do something else. What would you really like to do if you could?” Over the next few months he gave this question serious thought. He also realized that his heavenly Father ought to become his builder. He bought a business named Tekra and over the rest of his career profoundly blessed many other. I know this because so many of them sought me out at his funeral to share what a profound blessing he had been to them both personally and professionally.

To each of us Psalm 127 puts this question: Who’s your builder? If you are content with a slumping sandcastle as the product of your life’s construction please feel free to carry on. If on the other hand you would like home that is an eternal legacy to the true, the good, and the beautiful, God is ready and willing to start construction immediately.