Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Let’s Build More Floor For Sharing With Others

Paul Graves Staff writer

As a first-time homeowner, my pathetic handyman skills have really been exposed.

I’ve often said, “As a carpenter, I make a fair to middlin’ preacher.” So perhaps I’m missing something when I think it looks harder to build a wall than a floor.

I know my view of building walls and floors is pretty simplistic. But, to me, it just looks easier to build when you can lay the materials down on the ground rather than hold them up vertically, or stack bricks or blocks on top of one another.

If it’s true walls are more difficult to build, then why do we build so many more walls than floors in a new house? I know a certain number are “load-bearing walls,” giving much-needed stability so the roof or the floor above won’t crash down.

But the only thing other walls seem good for is to define “my space,” “your space” and “our space.”

Walls are sometimes good, but too often they just create suspicious people on the other side.

To me, floors seem easier to build.

I remember the special floor in my son’s second-grade classroom. I remember it because I was invited to sit on it a few times.

I brought my guitar into the class and led the children in singing songs. We sat together on the “reading rug.”

It created a special floor space where the children could go to hear their teacher read stories. It was where guests could share their talents or gifts with the children.

That floor space was quickly built and defined by the rug. There were no walls. From that rug, children could look all around their room at the other learning wonders. Or, when they were somewhere else in the room, they could easily see if anyone was in that space, ready to share another story or gift with them.

These children didn’t need walls. They had a special floor.

But building walls must be easier and more fun than building floors. Or maybe it just seems easier because we get so much more practice building walls that divide us, rather than floors where we can stand and sit together.

When we get serious about living as God’s children, we must keep pecking and chipping away at those walls.

Jesus is in the business of floor-building, not wall-building. Plus, Jesus always calls us to take the materials used in building those walls and use them for building a common floor, where we can gather and pray together, eat and laugh together, plan and work together.

What do we need to transform those wall blocks into blocks for building a floor, a foundation, upon which we might continue to build a community life worthy of the Gospel?

What we need is great mortar!

Too often, wall-building mortar, regardless of what the building blocks are called, is mixed with varied proportions of distrust, lack of control, isolation, individualism, fear of survival, complacency, ignorance, fear, a dishonesty that distorts truth. … You get the idea.

Most of the same blocks can be taken from the dividing wall, where people stand separated from one another, and placed into a floor, where people can stand together.

It isn’t surprising that mortar for floor blocks has ingredients that are opposite those that hold the dividing wall together:

Distrust is transformed into trust.

Lack of control becomes either healthy control or conscious relinquishment of control.

Isolation is transformed into realization that you aren’t alone.

Individualism can change to a new sense of community, especially with those who are different than we are.

Fear of survival? It’s transformed by the courage to believe and work for what we believe is right, and leave your ego survival in God’s hands.

Complacency is transformed into new passion for life, new compassion for others.

Ignorance is transformed into informed awareness about the issues in your community, our world, your own heart.

Fear is transformed by informed love - love that sees others with eyes and hearts wide open.

Dishonesty that distorts truth becomes a truth unafraid to look beneath the surface dishonesty to touch, even heal, the fear that lurks there.

These ingredients mixed together make a mortar that Paul calls reconciliation. It holds the blocks together.

God took the first step by reconciling us to him through Christ.

Our steps help us build the reconciliation floor where we can meet one other in hope, not fear. First, in our hearts. Then, in our actions together.

xxxx