“The focus is on the rebuilding… not the tearing down. The old must be torn down for the new to be raised; to have a resurrection you must have a crucifixion, but God wastes nothing, not even the wrong we imagined into existence. In every building torn down, there is as much that remains that once was true and right and good, and that gets woven into the new; in fact, the new could not be what it is without the old. It is the refurbishing of the soul.
There has to be a tearing down for the real and the right and the good and true to be built. There has to be a judgment and a dismantling. It is not only important, it is essential. However the kindness of God will not do the tearing down without your participation. Much of the time, God has to do very little. We are masters at building up facades, only to tear them down ourselves. In our independence we are very destructive creatures, first creating houses of cards and then knocking them down with out own hands. Addiction of every imagined sort, the will to power, the security of lies, the need for notoriety, the grasping of reputation, the trading of human souls…all houses of cards that we try and keep together by holding our breath. But thanks to the grace of God, we must someday breathe, and when we do, the breath of God joins ours and everything collapses.”
— Cross Roads, Wm. Paul Young
Today I was driving the backroads and ended up driving past one of my favorite summer lake haunts. Across the street from the access there was an old restaurant which has been for sale for quite some time. It is no longer. A big heap of snow-covered wood beams, siding and everything else that makes up a building sits next to a large dumpster and an excavator. The only thing left standing is a 25′ brick fireplace. I stopped to take a shot of the lake from the pier, and smelled burning wood. I turned and heard the crackling of a fire and saw a guy there throwing some wood on the fire. I walked over and spoke with him, and he said, “Yeah, this place has a lot of memories for me, and I saw this and thought I would burn one last fire in here before it got torn down. I hope they will save it for whatever they build here next, but you never know.” I made some more small talk and took this photo, and then said I would take off to leave him in peace.
When I was reading this passage, I thought of the projects we have been involved with in the past 7 months at the ministry. There’s a lot of tearing out the old to make ready for the new. The old stuff that remains gets woven into the new. It’s that way with the old Pool Room. We are not tearing it down and starting completely over, although that would actually be easier in the long run. We are taking the parts that are still good and putting new windows in, or a new roof, or floor, or whatever it is that we can to integrate the old with the new. But there had to be dismantling and removal of some parts of the room in order to get things right again. Like Young says in the quote above… “It’s essential.”
So while this restaurant is gone, they may yet choose to build something new around this grand old fireplace and completely transform and restore it back to a good purpose once more.