Epiphany 4 – The Builder
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
From my study window I’m watching a house being built. It’s a rather large house, built for a family. I watched and heard the previous house being demolished, and then a week or so later the slab and concrete hole for the pool were poured. The frame went up pretty quickly, then all was quiet over Christmas.
Scaffolding came next and within a couple of days the roof was installed – providing cover for the builders. Today the windows are being inserted. It’s taking shape pretty quickly and I wonder if the owners are coming by regularly to watch this house being constructed, getting excited with every new development and looking forward to making a home out of the building.
And I wonder how the various builders feel about what they are constructing. From nothing, a dwelling for people. They probably take it in their stride – but I think it is quite amazing – all the skills that go into this event. And then they finish and go onto the next one. I wonder if at the end of a working life, a builder ever counts up all the homes/buildings they have been involved in producing? And thought about all the people who have lived in/worked in what they have built with their own hands?
In our reading from Jeremiah, the prophet speaks of human beings being known by God even before being conceived in their mother’s womb. And the psalmist talks of God as being the one who brings him out of his mother’s womb. Like the builder of a home, the dwelling place that is each of us, known by God and built by God from before the beginning of life.
And it is Paul who, in his famous, ‘hymn of love’, assures Christ followers, that the love of God, perfected in Christ, will never end. We are loved eternally, when, Paul promises, we finally see clearly that love, which has known us from the start.
Praise to God, the builder of us all.
Blessings
Ceri
