For the most part humanity goes through life with blinders on. Life being what it is, the vast majority are always in the process of oblivious survival and reality denial.

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FACING REALITY

Indeed, survival has been the main preoccupation of the great mass of humanity throughout history. Life in this world is difficult in general but the gradients thereof can rank from just this side of impossible on a daily basis to being stalwart enough to keep two or three plates spinning at once for long enough stretches. The relentless attention to staying alive, however, must at some point be supplemented (to do it justice) by achieving relatively good health with minimal food and shelter for greater advancement to be possible. Yet, striving further, the struggle is then not only about the attempt at gaining the hard-won fruit of difficult toil, but also overcoming the incessant forces forever trying to keep one from getting to better places, and once getting there staying there.

As great feats of architecture must be engineered to overcome all manner of often unacknowledged natural stresses and forces arriving through moving winds, rushing water, and quaking earth, so must human beings learn to cope with forces and stresses which seem intent on fighting every step one makes toward a better life. Survival portends overcoming these relentless attacks and establishing small beachheads from which one can expand outward and upward. One’s first camp in life, with the rudimentary basics, in most often the hardest. From there it gets more doable but only because one has established a rough home of sorts to resort to when the going gets so tough it demands a break to rest and recharge. Without such an established starting point protected from the elements one can never sustain a drive toward breaking out of mere survival and remains forever at the mercy of those opposing forces intent on keeping one from rising up over them.

For the relative few who do manage to escape ceaseless survival mode, their new found freedom, diminutive as it may be, is immediately used for hopeful progress and they become preoccupied with improving their basic station in life. If actually succeeding against most odds at their lofty goal of bettering living beyond staying alive, the next pursuit is even loftier in that the attempt to excel enters the realm of possibility. There are some who do excel though the definition of such is fluid and depends on perception. At each hardy, difficult step of going-against-the-grain accomplishment and overcoming, one establishes a solid foundation from which to build the next advance. As long as said foundation remains strong and secure and one proceeds with correctly engineered plans and construction, one can keep building with confidence.

“Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.” [Luke 6:47-48]

The foundation part of one’s overall edifice is the decidedly tricky part. If not careful in building and securing one’s spiritual foundation the right way to the proper level of bearing strength, one finds out the hard way that one’s architectural life was actually a big game of Jenga just waiting to return to a disassembled natural state.

This unfortunate and all too common outcome experienced by a probable majority was inevitable once one’s faux foundation and the edifice upon it failed to hold at bay the straining-at-the-leash evil howling dogs of omnipresent stresses and forces determined to discover overlooked architectural error and slipshod work exceeding the parameters of allowable sound building practices which fatally compromised construction integrity.

“But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.” [Luke 6:49][1]

© 2022 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved. [To Be Continued]

[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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