So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household. —Ephesians 2:19
I’ve never been much of a cook, but I do remember a day as a young boy when I attempted to bake a cake for my mother. Now, don’t worry. I didn’t burn the kitchen down. But I did, believe it or not, learn two of life’s greatest principles that day: (1) Everything worthwhile consists of a mix of strange ingredients, and (2) if you follow the directions, written by someone who knows from experience, you’re going to get what you’re looking for.
Many years later, I took a job with a contractor to help pay my college tuition. I had always been fascinated with construction, and this was my chance to get in on the ground floor, so to speak.
My first day on the job, in early June 1965, we were pouring footings for a house in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. By the time I found the job site, a cement mixer was already there discharging concrete into the forms. My boss and his assistant were helping to direct the heavy gray stuff into the right places. Thinking this was going to be fun, I grabbed a hoe. This was my first experience of working with concrete. By the end of the day, I discovered why most cement workers are big and strong. My muscles felt like cooked pasta.
Concrete is another mix of just the right ingredients: sand, gravel, water, and Portland cement. Since I had no experience with concrete, it was good that someone other than me had mixed it together that day.
Over the next several summers, I learned what I had discovered in my mother’s kitchen. Every worthwhile thing consists of a mix of strange ingredients, and if you follow someone who knows from experience what to do, you’re going to get what you’re looking for.
Building a beautiful and sturdy house takes concrete, steel, lumber, wire, copper pipe, brick—set with a mixture of cement and lime—heavy lumber, window sashes, plywood, tile, grout, and so forth. And for all of these things to come together in a way that creates a livable and lovely dwelling, it’s best to have experienced folks leading the charge.
The apostle Paul called the ingredients that make up God’s house “foreigners and strangers” (v. 19). These elements are the eggs, baking soda, and milk of the cake—the gravel, plasterboard, and asphalt shingles of your house. However, in God’s miraculous fashion, He takes these unlikely ingredients—just look at us!—and out of them creates a “household,” a “holy temple” (vv. 19, 21) . . . His unified “body” (v. 16). Wow.
As we have discovered throughout the Scriptures, this is a perfect image of our own homes. We start with unlikely components: individuals who want to live together but who are as different as water and vegetable oil, as opposite as reinforcing rods and glass. But God calls men—unlikely bakers or general contractors like you and me—to take these components and build a wonderful family, a deliciously strong and safe home.
Doing this successfully takes a lot of work. It takes a great deal of patience. Most of all, building this house takes confidence in the One with all the experience. Trust Him with the integrity of the mixture of elements and the experience of using unlikely things to create wonderful things.
Turning Jews, Greeks, hypocrites, and fools into a holy temple, He’s done this before.