The other day I was working around in the workshop in my garage and needed to go up in the attic for something. Usually when I go up into the rafters I carry a flashlight. I have one of those lights that I need to keep shaking and knocking otherwise it does not work. So, as usual, the light went out, but I could see just fine in my attic. Uh-oh, that’s bad. One thing you don’t want in an attic is lots of sunlight especially with the first big El Nino storm two days away!
The lots in my old neighborhood are set up so that the homes and garages sometimes sit only inches from the property lines. What that means is that I rarely see the south side of my garage. The north side looks just fine. The roof is old but quite intact. However the south side faces my neighbor’s yard. It is conveniently out of my daily sight. When I climbed up on the roof and looked at my neighbor’s view of my roof I was at first astounded, then flooded with embarrassment. The sun over the last few summers had baked half of my roof to a char-broiled crisp. There are, or were, three layers of roofing material. The top layer had almost completely worn away, piece by piece into my neighbor’s yard. There were several places where I could see the original wood shingles from 1923. And there were a couple of large holes. I was hoping that my neighbor was not at home when I tried to assess my roof and cover the biggest holes with some remnant shingles, but no such luck. “Sucks when a roof gets old,” I heard from down to my left.
There must be entire chapters in Proverbs written about the fool?
“For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them..” Proverbs 1:32 (Emphasis mine)
Now maybe I am being too hard on myself. After all I did not intend to let this happen. But it did happen and ultimately it is my responsibility. I neglected my roof. After the foundation, the roof is probably the most important part of protecting a building. If an old barn or old house falls apart it starts with the roof allowing the eroding work of water to stream in and deteriorate the rest of the structure.
There were times over the last 18 years in this home when I went over to borrow a wood clamp or something from my neighbor. “Hmm,” I would think, “I might need to give that roof some attention someday.” But most of the time that side of the roof is out of sight and easily pushed out of my mind. What is sadly ironic is that my folly is the first thing my neighbor sees when he looks at my property! My neighbor could see my deficiency better than I could and it is the main thing he sees. But, for me, the roof was just far enough out of my sight that I could avoid dealing with it if I wanted to…until, of course, it is too late.
Many of you know that I treasure woodworking. Inside my workshop are all of my precious tools. So what this roof protects is no trivial matter to me. The consequences of my neglect could be very serious.
Now some of you are ready to pick up the phone and offer me a good stern talking too, which I deserve. Or maybe you already are putting your roofing hammer and nails in your tool belt. Bless you! But before you do that I want to make it even worse. And then I want to ask you some questions.
It occurred to me that there might be other things in my life that I am neglecting and avoiding. And without directly intending to hurt others, my neglect could cause disaster or hardship for me and those I dearly love.
We live in a culture of motivation by feelings. Often neglect comes because I just don’t feel like taking care of something. We also live in a world with too many choices. So I can choose to do what I think, or feel, are good things. This gives me an excuse for letting “my roof” dangerously deteriorate. Hey, I have been doing lots of other good things instead! I have built some good furniture and fixed some of my friends’ broken appliances. But how absurd to neglect that very roof that makes those other projects possible! All the while my neighbor sees my broken roof.
We also live in a culture of intention. We have elevated intention above all else. For example, you may have received some pretty crazy gifts this last Christmas. But, hey it’s the thought that counts right, especially if the gift was from one of your young grandkids! But I wonder if sometimes I hide behind my “good intentions” and use that as a mask for my neglect. What if I give my wife or one of my children this “wonderful” gift, that they have no interest in, does it show that I have neglected getting to know their personalities or even needs. This goes way beyond gifts, of course.
What other things have I neglected? And why? I am going to spend 2016 figuring out why I have neglected and avoided certain things, like cleaning up my office or organizing my workshop, or serving my wife better by putting my clothes in the closet instead of piling them on a chair in the corner. There is something beneath the surface, in my soul, that is causing problems.
What relationships have I neglected? Have I really taken time to get to know my kids or my wife? They want my time much more than the new set of chairs. Do I take time to get to know my students, learn their names, listen to their story? They probably would learn more from me by my interest in them than by me taking more time to tinker with my lecture presentation.
Hopefully I am sharing my soul with you not out of narcissistic self-laceration. I confess these follies to you in hopes that you too will consider your own roof, uh, soul.
What have you been neglecting? Is there a relationship that needs patching up? Does one of your parents need a “forgive me” letter? Does something or someone at work need your attention? If you are a pastor or leader of a church, are you neglecting the souls sitting in the pews because you are spending time on “running the church?” Maybe you just need to take care of your car or fix the fence that has been leaning over for too long. (Yep, those are my problems too.)
But really, of all of the bad things I could do, isn’t neglect or avoidance pretty far down the list? How much can neglect really hurt anyway? Actually, neglect, according to God was one of the biggest and most recurring sins of Israel, and subsequently the church. They/we forget two things. Judges 8 is just one of the many, many passages of Scripture that show Israel’s neglect and God’s thoughts about it:
33 Then it came about, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the sons of Israel again played the harlot with the Baals, and made Baal-berith their god. 34 Thus the sons of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side; 35 nor did they show kindness to the household of …Gideon in accord with all the good that he had done to Israel.
In God’s eyes two of our biggest sins are neglecting Him and subsequently neglecting others…in that order. In fact I wonder if our neglect of others ultimately is rooted in a neglect of God.
I think neglect can have another side to it in how I can simply ignore things, even “unintentionally”. This says a lot about me. I have had convicting times half way through a semester when I realized that there was a student sitting in the corner of the room, and I have not spoken to her or learned her name.
God is a great God. He is invisible. He gives us the freedom to neglect Him, avoid Him or ignore Him. Have you been neglecting God lately? Oh, I know you are going to church faithfully and being a good role model for your kids in that, but are you avoiding Someone? You are reading through the Bible again, which is so, so good, but do you know the (Holy) Ghost-writer? I know you are serving Him by teaching Sunday School, singing in the choir, remodeling rooms at the church or serving as elder, but have you taken time to bow at the throne. No, that sounds too religious and we can say “bow at the throne” and still miss Something. DO YOU KNOW JESUS?! Have you spent enough time in His workshop so that you too smell like sawdust? Is He your Friend? Can people say of you or me, “He really knows Jesus!” Do you know Him as well as you know your spouse? Or is He like the guy holding a sign on the freeway offramp, always present, but avoid eye contact? There have been people that knew Jesus so well that they reminisced about Him as if they had been one of the twelve. Yes that is possible…for you…for me! Don’t neglect Him! He is your roof! Listen to Psalm 91:4: “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.” Are you neglecting God? Friends, at some point the rain is going to come down hard. This is a ver serious matter!
Don’t ignore your roof!
Friends, I am so embarrassed to say that I neglected the roof of my workshop! It is glaring stupidity for all to see, especially my closest neighbor. The nights following my discovery I laid in bed worrying about it. It kept me up, I had a knot in my stomach. How sad and silly this is, but true. Many of you have real troubles! Some of you have parents that are ailing in a distant state and you are carrying that burden. Some of you have deep burdens at your work or no work at all. Some of you have children making crazy choices. Some of you are carrying the weight of a lost world. Some of you have a tumor. Some of you have been deeply disappointed by someone or just disappointed by life in general. You may be responsible in some degree, or not at all. How do we fix that roof?
This next few months I am going work on “fixing that roof”. I have chosen a Psalm for the year. Just as nails are repeatedly pounded into the rafters, I plan to meditate repeatedly on Psalm 34. I wish I had space to put the whole thing here but just hear a few verses:
18“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the [troubles] of the righteous,
But the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
Either these words totally true or totally false. The oddest thing is that David wrote this Psalm at maybe the lowest part of his life. He wrote it when he was alone and decided to pretend to be insane by muttering and drooling in front of the Philistines so they would not kill him. How could David say at this point “Those who look to Him are radiant.” How? Because David had hope. He knew the God of hope. But what is hope? Dallas Willard wrote something that I think fits right here: “Faith sees the reality of the unseen or invisible, and it includes a readiness to act as if the good anticipated in hope were already in hand because of the reality of God.” (My emphasis) Am I ready to act as if the good anticipated were already in my hands? That is where I want to be! That is the intersection of hope and faith. That was what David lived under, his roof. It is messy and it is limited vision and it is one step at a time. But NAIL DOWN THOSE SHINGLES! Put in the effort now! I am spending long periods of time repeating over and over again that Psalm one verse at a time. (Not a very Baptist thing to do!) Will you consider waiting on the LORD like this? Pick a Psalm and meditate on it for several minutes at a time for the next month until you see the dependable reality of it in your life. Soon the words will become settled into your thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions. Maybe even your wants will change.
I am writing this, because like most of my friends right now, I have troubles far bigger than my roof. So many of you/us have deep and real troubles. But I still have this problem with my workshop. My workshop is a metaphor for much of my life! Lisa told me to simply call a roofer. Duh! But that is hard for a do-it-yourselfer. It was hard to pick up the phone. But I am not as young as I used to be. That material is heavy.
These roofers are sure loving El Nino! The roofer took a look at it and said, “don’t worry.” Really! “I am too busy to get to it until summer, but I have this material I could throw over it at no cost until we have the time to re-roof it.” And that is purely God’s grace. I don’t have to be a do-it-yourselfer! I don’t have to carry that burden! Are you a do-it-yourselfer? Are you carrying something that is too heavy? I wonder if the root of my problem is that I am a do-it-yourselfer? Is that what pride is all about? Is that pride the root of my neglect and avoidance? Well that is going to take a lot of thinking and reflecting. But grace is me not acting or living alone. For now I want to encourage you to hope in a way that you actually anticipate the action of God, our Friend. He’s the Roofer that says, “Don’t worry, I can handle this.” That is the promise. And we have each other to help. Our neighbors will be watching.
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