Building Work - The somewhat different Advent Calender XVIII ...

Tuesday, Dec 18, 2012. Recently, the media reported about several large building projects in Germany which were not running smoothly. The opening of the new airport in Berlin, for example, was postponed twice now, with a big mess in terms of its building processes. The new train station in Stuttgart developed into a complete nightmare in terms of public communication.

How do we organize our building work? …

The topic is more general than just talking about two big public projects. Building work is carried out in most parts of our business life - and also in our personal life. We bought a house some years ago, and we are still working on it, building new windows into it, renovating the cellar, working on the roof etc. Building work is part of our life.

Some people are quite active on carreer building. They try to reach nice positions. They try to earn a lot of money. And it is a reasonable goal to learn some profession and be good in it, to contribute to a larger institution or company and get some of this work rewarded by good pay. We want to see the fruits of our work. When we deliver good work, we want to get something back from it!

How is it going with the different parts of our life? What building work are we doing here? Partnership? Family? Kids? Perhaps we are active in some social area, with a charity or some political party. We want to build up our network, want to contribute to the social development. Building on this level might even be more important than building business relationships!

God is starting some building work in us …

With the Jesus baby in Bethlehem, God is starting some building work in our life as well! We have heard about the topic: God is coming into this world. But do we understand, what he wants to build? Do we fully grasp the meaning of his “kingdom”? It is a crucial point for us to understand. It is a crucial point for us to participate!

God wants to build his kingdom of peace, truth and grace in our life. He wants us to be a part of it, a holy stone. He wants us to be fully filled with his spirit, with the spirit of purity and love and justice and grace. Building our life without him would be crazy! But building all parts of our life with him is brilliant and exciting. With Jesus God starts sincere building work in us … let us open our hearts and let him do the good work, which he started at Christmas with and in Jesus!

In the biblical texts God is going back and forth between general images and very concrete actions. He is addressing our hopes and dreams as well as our concrete needs to be guided and to get input how to build and work. And it is important, to keep this perspective: to both work with single steps, addressing particular parts of our life, and to see the big goal, his kingdom to come, his will to be done, his light to shine. Let us go concrete steps today! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts