Blocks

The other day I heard Anna’s voice calling me into her playroom where she wanted me to come and see the zoo she was building. Someone had given her these little plastic animals and she decided that they needed a place of their own, so she got down the big tub of little wooden blocks and started building. When I walked in the room, I saw this perfect little block zoo with an entry way and separate pins for the giraffe, the elephant and the lion. I said, “Wow Anna, that’s a great zoo. I like how everyone has their own space.” She told me that was so they wouldn’t fight.

Anna loves to build stuff with blocks, and she pretty much rules at it. She builds everything from castles to cabins, hospitals, towers, bridges, causeways and even entire cities. She populates her vast and intricate creations with this army of tiny plastic bears who sleep on little block beds and drive little block cars, vans and trucks. This is an endless world of fun for Anna that only has one potential problem… hurricane Norah. My almost three-year-old also loves playing with blocks, but for a different reason. See, Anna thinks the fun in blocks is to build them up and imagine life in the little world she has made, while Norah stacks blocks on top of each other for the pure joy of knocking them down. Oh, how many times have I comforted the broken-hearted Anna as her beloved buildings were mercilessly demolished by Norah stomping through the playroom like Godzilla in Tokyo?

For weeks now, we have been in the middle of a global economic crisis. The world’s markets have tanked so many times that I’ve lost count. People have used words like “Great Depression,” “Crash” and even “Armageddon.” In the chaos of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the half dozen record losses in the stock market and the failing and bailing of some of the world’s largest banks and financial institutions, some people are really, really worried. Some folks have lost thousands of dollars and others have lost simply everything… savings, retirement, kid’s college fund, you name it. Some folks are losing more sleep over their money than they ever have in their lives.

It seems to me that some people are discovering that they have spent their lives, their time and their energy building a world for themselves out of little wooden blocks… a little block city with block cars riding on block bridges to their little block houses. And now they are watching all that work and investment crumble. Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending all day long building stuff that won’t last out of blocks… as long as you are five years old. Jesus said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” Last Sunday Tom told our congregation that he had some very good news about the financial crisis. He said, “For those of you who have invested money into the kingdom of God, your investments are secure. You haven’t lost a thing.”