Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen. —Jude 24–25
Having started my building career in the Chicago area, I became quickly—and painfully—acquainted with building inspectors. Before jumping into the business, it never dawned on me that a contractor wasn’t his own boss. Certainly he had to please the customer, but if the customer was happy, then who else should care? The inspector, that’s who.
I learned to respect—and fear—the building inspector. He was one person who could bring any project to a screeching halt if he saw something he didn’t like. My boss and I were building a car wash with twelve-inch concrete blocks. Since there was no basement, we had trenched a foundation, twelve inches wide and forty inches deep. This was plenty of depth to support our one-story structure, and we were ready for inspection.
Our inspector, Leonard, walked around my beautiful ditch, making notes on a form attached to a clipboard. Occasionally his tape measure reached down to test for the proper depth. I had done this many times and knew what he was going to find: forty inches all the way around. Frankly, I was proud of my trench. Leonard approached my boss and me. His face did not reveal anything good or bad. He would have been an excellent poker player.
“You’ve got a sound trench,” Leonard said, leaving a thin lift in his voice to let us know this wasn’t all he was going to say. “But to be safe, I want to see the trench splayed to twenty-four inches at the bottom all the way around.” My boss brought out the blueprint and showed Leonard that the plan only called for a straight ditch. “I’m sorry,” he said as he turned to walk back to his clean, white pickup.
My boss pulled a splaying tool from the bed of his truck and handed me a special shovel with a strange-looking, thin bent shaft. He explained that the inspector wanted us to widen the ditch at the bottom to two feet. With that, he jumped into his truck and drove off to another job site. I guess he had splayed before and was not eager to help. For the remainder of that day and all the next, I lay on my belly, splaying one hundred and fifty feet of ditch to the desired width and then lifting the pieces of clay dirt out of the ditch with my hands. I never want to see a splaying tool again.
If you’re married with children, you’re a dad. If you’re single but have a chance to spend time with kids, you know the responsibility you have. Who inspects our work? Are we free to do what we want as long as our families are pleased with our work? Or is an inspector about to show up, someone who knows the codes even better than our wives and children?
The goal here is to pass inspection so thoroughly that our Savior can present us to His Father “without blemish and with great joy” (v. 24). King David said it this way, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way” (Ps 139:23–24).
Being God’s man may seem like a tough assignment. Well, I’ve got great news. This inspector doesn’t only show up at inspection time. He’s around all the time. When He’s finished, He doesn’t jump into His white pickup and disappear. In addition to presenting us to the Father, He will “protect [us] from stumbling” (Jd 24) along the way. In other words, He’s right in the trenches with us. That’s a lot more than we can say for my boss. Or for Leonard.