Unless the Lord.......

A while back, one of my grand kids asked me if I had a photo of the house that I grew up in. At that time, I didn't.  I don't know why I never took a photo of it.  I guess I always thought that I would go back home, and see it with my own eyes.  Recently a friend from home was able to take a few snapshots of my childhood house for me.  Now I have something to show my grand children.  The house doesn't look as it did when I was a child, in fact it looks quite sad and run down. While I was growing up, my dad was good at keeping up with home repairs.  He made sure that the paint was freshened every five years or so.  He made sure that the trees were trimmed, and that the fence did what a fence should do.....keep the kids in the yard and keep strangers out.
As I was looking at the photos it struck me that everything in life can fall to disrepair if we are not constantly maintaining it.  And this holds true with my life......with all areas of my life.  My marriage, my friendships, my work, my physical health, and the most important, my relationship with God.  As I looked at that run down house and yard, I was reminded again of how easy it is to let "things go." I get so busy with life, with doing my own thing, that I forget to maintain those things that are so very important.  If I leave a hole in the roof of my house, then the roof will leak and after a while, it will fall down.  If I don't sand and repaint the peeling paint around my home's window frames then moisture and bugs can get into the wood, and they will rot away to nothing.  If we don't expend the effort to trim our trees, and mow our yard.....well, you get the point.  The same holds true for my spiritual life and for my relationships.  I need to expend the energy, and take the time, to maintain them!  This means that I need to be aware of "peeling paint and rotten roofs."  I need to be asking the Lord if all is well with us, if all is well with my marriage and with my other relationships. I have learned that it takes more work to rebuild, than to repair and maintain.  So, I am asking for Him to show me the "leaks and the peeling paint," so that I can be a good steward of the good things that He has entrusted to me.
"Unless the Lord builds the house, it's builders labor in vain....."
Psalm 127:1