Pastor's Column (November 14, 2013)

A Lesson on Fence Building


During one of my summers while home from college I worked for a real estate
company in landscape maintenance. A friend of mine was the manager and I had
told her I had a hard time finding a job for the summer. She graciously offered to
put me to work for her company. While I was excited about the pay, which was
pretty good, the idea of spending much of the summer working outside wasn’t too
appealing. The thermometer usually stays pretty high in the Tri-Cities,
Washington during the summer months, and I’ve never been that fond of
“outdoor” work. Nonetheless, I was desperate for money for my college expenses
so I took the job.

That summer I found myself doing a variety of things to fix-up and maintain
properties. My favorite job was painting since that usually allowed me to be in an
air-conditioned climate. My least favorite work was weeding and mowing lawns.
One day while working at an apartment complex, the manager there asked me to
build a fence in the front of the buildings. I explained to him that I had no
experience doing this but I would be willing to try if he helped me get started. We
began and he eventually left most of the work up to me.

As the heat intensified my desire for “accuracy” diminished. I noticed a couple of
the fence posts weren’t exactly aligned properly. My attitude was that a little
misalignment wouldn’t make that big of a difference and besides in the end it
would all look fine.

When I got to the end of the job I was horrified! The fence was all crooked and I
was not very proud of my work. When I drove my parents by to show them what I
had been working on they both nearly laughed themselves out of the car.

I haven’t driven by lately to see if the fence is still standing. I have my doubts.
While I can laugh about the entire experience and I will often refer to it to tell
people how I’m not very good at those kinds of projects, the truth is I really didn’t
care that much about accuracy. It was the gradual lowering of standards for
accuracy that made the final result so poor.

In our relationships, the same thing can begin to happen. We can gradually
become less and less concerned about “speaking the truth in a spirit of love”
(Ephesians 4:15) until our relationship with God and with each other takes a bad
turn and everything gets crooked.

It’s the gradual lowering of standards and striving for charity that damages our
ability to give authentic witness to the love of God and to build strong healthy
relationships. The more concerned we become about our character and whether
or not our actions our rooted in love, the more we can give glory to Almighty God,
the source of love.

My little fence project taught me a valuable lesson about Christian character. If
you really don’t care about something and lower the standards, you won’t be
proud of your work. On judgment day when I give an account for my life I want to
see a fence that isn’t quite so crooked and laughable. The only way for me to
straighten it out is to be more concerned with my actions each and every day and

to seek God’s forgiveness and help along the way

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