Drive through almost any village in Jamaica and you will see them: houses with steel bars sticking up from the top of the columns, waiting for the next storey. A ground floor finished and lived in, with a flat roof that was always meant to be a floor. Some of those bars have been rusting for ten years. Each one is a small monument to a family’s hope, and to how long hope can take.
Building a home in stages is how many families have always done it. Save, buy a few hundred blocks, pay a mason for a week, stop. Save again. Lose a job, pause for two years. Start again when a son overseas sends something home. It is slow and frustrating, and more than once the family wonders whether it will ever be finished.
A builder who was told to stop
The book of Nehemiah is, among other things, a building story. Nehemiah is a servant in the Persian court when he hears that the walls of Jerusalem are broken down and its gates burned. He weeps, prays, and asks the king for permission to go and rebuild. When he arrives, he inspects the ruins at night, then gathers the people and tells them the plan.
Almost immediately, the opposition begins. Local officials laugh at them and accuse them of rebellion. Nehemiah’s answer is short: “The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build” (Nehemiah 2:20, KJV).
It does not get easier. The mockers say the wall is so weak that a fox could knock it down. Threats follow. The workers grow tired, and there is rubble everywhere. Some families are in debt and struggling to feed their children. At one point, the builders work with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other.
And yet the wall goes up. Not because the obstacles vanished, but because the people kept laying stones.
The obstacles we know
Anyone building a home today will recognise some of Nehemiah’s troubles. Money runs short. Prices for steel and cement rise just when you have saved enough. Workers do not turn up. A family member says the plan is too ambitious. A neighbour complains about the noise. The approvals take longer than anyone promised. And then there are the obstacles inside us: discouragement, comparison with those whose houses went up in a year, the quiet voice that says we are foolish to keep trying.
Nehemiah does not pretend these things are not real. He prays about them, sometimes in one breath, as when he answers the king. He organises the work so that each family builds the section of wall nearest their own house. He deals with injustice when he finds that some of the builders are being crushed by debt. He is practical and prayerful at the same time.
Not an accident
Behind Nehemiah’s persistence is a conviction that he was not in Jerusalem by accident. God had put the work in his heart. Many of us need to hear something similar. Through Jeremiah, God told His people in exile: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jeremiah 29:11, KJV).
That promise was spoken to people far from home, told to build houses and plant gardens where they were. It was not a promise that everything would be easy or quick. It was a promise that their lives had a purpose and a future, even in the waiting.
For those still building
If your house, literally or figuratively, is still waiting for its second storey, a few thoughts from Nehemiah’s story may help:
- Build the section nearest you. You do not have to finish everything at once; lay the next course.
- Pray short prayers often. Nehemiah’s quickest prayers came in the middle of his work.
- Do not build alone. The wall went up because families worked side by side.
- Deal with debt honestly. Building on borrowed money you cannot repay is its own kind of broken wall.
- Ignore the foxes. There will always be someone who says it cannot be done.
For reflection
- What are you building, a house, a family, a life, that has taken longer than you hoped?
- What is the next single course of blocks you could lay this month?
God of heaven, You put the desire to build in our hearts. When the work is slow and the voices are discouraging, give us Nehemiah’s courage to arise and build again. Help us to be patient, wise with our money, and faithful in small steps, trusting that You know the end from the beginning. Amen.
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