Where to dig for gold

Christ is the foundation, but some build on it with gold, while others with wood, hay and stumble. The worrisome thing is that we won’t really know what materials we’ve been building with until “the Day,” when the quality of our efforts will be finally revealed. On that Day, the hay and stubble will be burned away; only the people who used these perishable materials will be saved, as if by the skin of their teeth.

My wife is lying in bed after cancer surgery. Coming out of her are six drains that I empty three times a day; along with changing her bandages, cooking for her, and so on. If teaching doesn’t work out, I may try nursing …

Today is Sunday and she is obviously not in any position to be driven to church. So I take the Bible to her bedside, and we are reading about Christ the foundation, and about the gold and silver, and about the hay and stubble.

“What am I doing that is gold?” I ask her. “I wonder if writing this Logos2Go blog every day is gold … or just hay that will be burned away?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but before you came in I was thinking about how men lead their wives, about so-and-so and so-and-so.”

We converse about the testimonies of marriages we know, some good, some not so good.

Then she said, with the drain tubes coming out of her: “You are leading me by reading the Bible with me; that was intentional on your part.”

So I say, “Maybe to build with gold, it has to involve intention, and it has to involve others.” And then we moved on.

In several weeks, I will be speaking at a men’s retreat about stress in marriage. In preparing for it, the word that has come to me is “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies … this is a profound mystery, but I am speaking of Christ and the church.”

At the intersection of these passages – building on Christ the foundation with gold, and loving one’s wife as Christ loves the Church – at the intersection of these passages, if one digs down with intentionality, one just might strike gold.

Logos2Go

1 Corinthians 3.11-15 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw -the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

Ephesians 5.29-32 … no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church- for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church.