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The Foundation of Everything


Jesus replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37)
 
          If you're constructing a building, you lay the foundation first. If you're like me, you want to say "Yeah, yeah, yeah... can we start talking about the Palladian windows and the color of paint for the walls? Let's get to the 'good stuff.'" The foundation is key. Without it, the rest is a waste of time. God created the universe. He designed how it functions. To reject Him, to ignore Him, to pretend there is no connection between the universe and Him requires that the foundation of anything we build is built on a lie. It is doomed to failure. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," you might say. "We've got that. We're Christians." Even Christians miss this. We miss it by miles. The moment we say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," we've missed it. I'm not belaboring the point just to use words. This isn't lip service to religion after which we get to move on to practical matters. This is the practical matter.
       To build a foundation, you dig down to rock. Experts know how deep a foundation must be built to keep the building placed on it from collapsing. Any building or system that is not built on sufficient foundation will not survive. It is a waste of time, effort, talent and resources. It will do us no good to say, "Yes, we love God" and then look to the way the world is doing things for our way to solve our problems. We must look to God, accept His design and work according to His teachings. Any other way is doomed. You may as well put a skyscraper on a foundation of salt and watch the rainwater dissolve it away.
          None of us are as good at this as we should be. We want to love God, but we have our own ideas. Other things demand our attention. The problems we face loom so large, and are so demanding. We don't have time to wait for God. This other way is faster, more efficient. That doesn't matter. The building will fall, the effort will be wasted.
         If we are to address the problems we face as individuals or the problems we face as a society, we need to take the time to dig down through all the dirt in our lives, to lay aside our plans and ideas and build based on the foundational principles that God has established. We need to build everything on Him because He is the Reality that is the foundation for what we call "reality." We need to embrace that in the same way that  a wise engineer embraces the reality of a foundation.
          What does that look like? Jesus told us. "If you love me, you will obey what I command."  (John 14:15). To love God, we must bring our lives in line with His commands, including His commands about how the universe is to function. If you want to solve the problems you face, or that society faces, you'll make sure your love for God is sound, and you will look to Him for those solutions.
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Birthday of
John Masifield

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