Everything had been swept away, there was no cabin there. After a 2-day trip of hiking and skiing, I stood on top of the avalanche debris, looking at the remains of all our hard work.
Foundations aren’t pretty. Grey, concrete, mostly hidden. They look even more ugly when they don’t have anything on top of them – a reminder of former ambitions or demolished dreams.
That’s certainly how I felt, as I stood on top of these foundations earlier this year, in the remote part of our country known as ‘The Valley’. A few days previously, I had received a phone call from local friends to say that the cabin we’d been building as part of a tourism development project had been swept off the side of the mountain. Now, as I stood on top of dull, grey foundations with no cabin on top of them, I contemplated how our work had been revealed, not by fire, but by snow … and found very lacking (1 Cor 3:13).
Processing the loss with local friends up there was a fruitful experience. They were visibly upset. Their hard work had been swept off the mountainside, but they were also keen to impress upon us that no one in their 150 years or more of community history on that hillside had ever seen an avalanche touch that spot.
I sat with my colleagues in their guest room and shared with them that whilst we were indeed saddened by what had happened, I wanted to follow the Psalmist’s model of taking time, even in moments of darkness, to praise and to worship. I shared with them Psalm 8 – David’s psalm of marvel at God’s majesty in creation. It seemed appropriate Laying a foundation as a wise builder to remember that the power of the avalanche, that laid waste our cabin for several hundred yards down a mountainside, is incomparably minuscule compared with the power of the creator God of the universe.
As we have served alongside the local church here, the picture of foundations has been one that we have returned to, time and time again. In a society where the vast majority of our local friends have engaged in constructing their own home, there’s strong resonance with the concept. We often want to quickly jump ahead to the pretty bits – the aesthetics, and the finer points of design – but unless we take time to build good quality foundations then that work is futile.
We have been spending increasing amounts of time shoring up theological foundations through teaching over this last year. It is often not the fancy or practical part of the Christian walk – whatever the ministry equivalent is of picking out wallpaper – but it is essential. We are so often tempted by ‘doing’ in the Christian life and are prone to skip the building of solid foundations that will mean the wallpaper can be admired for many years to come.
In The Valley we have not even poured the foundations yet. Alongside others with a heart for those isolated communities, we have been going through the spiritual equivalent of clearing rocks, putting in stakes and marking out the boundaries. Our hope is not to see cabins built, but his church.
After reading Psalm 8, we talked about the author and I shared the good news of Jesus, the better David, who defeated the giants of sin, the world, and the devil, and who is now “crowned with glory and honour” (Psalm 8:5). In the work of spiritual construction, after years of relationship building, it took stripping back our cabin to its foundations to have an opportunity to begin breaking ground in the hearts of our dear friends there.
Photos: Trekking in the mountains and the remains of the cabin.
E serves in Central Asia in church planting.