Daily Worship

“Unless the Lord builds the house…”

Pete Phillips June 04, 2025 2 3
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Isaiah 44: 9-10 (NIVUK)

9 All who make idols are nothing,
    and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
    they are ignorant, to their own shame.
10 Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
    which can profit nothing?

This reading reminds me of the beginning of Psalm 127. It was carved on a stone plaque on Mullion Cove Harbour: “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain.” We visited the harbour on our honeymoon, my wife and I. We visited it again recently, and the harbour wall was no more, just ruins in the sea. A sad tale of the power of the sea and the all too common frailty of human construction.

Isaiah makes it clear that although we are made in God’s image as co-creators, co-fashioners of the world, we must remember that we are not God. All I (we?) make, all I (we?) do, has the tendency to crash and burn. I’ve put that in my voice. It’s what I believe is true. The Greeks wouldn’t have. They had a word for that human trait by which we think our creations are perfect, our plans unbeatable, our prayers the best in the world. Hubris – unquenchable pride. But we know pride comes before a fall. We are called not to be hubristic co-creators (sorry, mums and dads and grandparents all), but to realise that everything we make is but a human-made thing. Everything will, like us, perish and decay. All that will remain is what God has given us, what God has fashioned, what God raises again to glory.

 

Prayer:

 

Dear God, what kind of photograph album should I show you when we meet face to face in that mansion prepared for me? What are my great achievements? The books I’ve written, the children I’ve raised, the gardens I’ve tended, the friendships I’ve nurtured, the places I’ve visited, the meals cooked, the songs sung, the money raised?

What’s that? Lord?

Where are the albums full of the hungry strangers I fed? the thirsty passers-by to whom I gave water? The prisoners I visited in prison? The clothes I put on other people rather than myself? The people whom I chose to look after in sickness and in health?

O Lord, unless you build our life, all of us labour in vain.