Steel Sticking Out of the Roof: Living in the Unfinished House, and the Unfinished Self

Drive through almost any district in Jamaica, or much of the Caribbean, and you will see them: concrete houses with steel rods sticking up out of the roof like grey stalks. To visitors it can look untidy. To anyone who grew up there, it means something quite specific. Those rods are a promise. One day, when the money is there, another storey will go up.

Sometimes that day comes in two years. Sometimes it takes twenty. Sometimes the person who poured the first slab never sees the second, and the rods rust quietly while children grow up underneath them. Meanwhile, life goes on in the part that is finished: birthdays, homework, Sunday dinner, all happening beneath a roof that was always meant to be a floor.

Building as you can

There is wisdom in building in stages. Many families simply cannot borrow enough to build all at once, and would rather not carry a large debt even if they could. So they pour the foundation one year, raise the walls the next, cast the roof when the partner draw comes through, and move in as soon as there is a door that locks. It is patient, practical and very often faithful.

But it also means living with incompleteness for a long time. Bare block walls in the back room. A kitchen with no cupboards. Temporary wiring that has been temporary for six years. A staircase that leads up to nothing. Anyone who has lived in a house like that knows the mix of pride and frustration it brings.

The good work already begun

Paul wrote to the church at Philippi with a line that could hang in any half-built house:

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6, NIV)

Paul is talking about people, not buildings. The Philippians were a young church, far from perfect. They would later need to be told to stop squabbling (Philippians 4:2). Yet Paul is confident about them, not because they were finished, but because of who had started the work.

The same is true of us. Most of us are, in one way or another, a house with steel sticking out of the roof. Some rooms are done. Others are bare block. Some areas of our character are still on temporary wiring. We keep hoping that one day we will be complete, patient, generous, calm under pressure. For now, we live in the part that is finished and trust God with the rest.

The temptation to wait for the second storey

There is a trap in all this. It is easy to feel that real life will start when the house is done. Then we will have people over. Then we will host the family Christmas. Then we will feel settled. Consider a couple who lived for more than a decade in the ground floor of a house they planned to extend. They never invited the church home group, because “the place isn’t ready”. When the upstairs was finally finished, their children had left home and the group had long since moved on to someone else’s verandah.

The same thing can happen with our spiritual lives. We wait to serve until we feel more mature. We hold back from friendship until we have sorted ourselves out. We tell God, in effect, that he can use us once the renovation is complete. But God seems perfectly willing to work through unfinished people, as he did with the Philippians, with Peter, with almost everyone in Scripture.

Blooming where you are poured

So what does it look like to live well in an unfinished house, and as an unfinished person?

• Make the finished part lovely. One painted room, a curtain, a plant on the step. It is not a waste to make the present comfortable while you wait for the future.
• Open the door anyway. Friends and neighbours will not mind the bare blocks. They will remember the welcome.
• Keep the plan alive, gently. Put something aside when you can. Keep the drawings safe. Do not abandon the vision, but do not let it make you miserable either.
• Be honest about safety. Temporary wiring, missing railings and exposed steel can be dangerous, especially with children. Some things should not wait for the full budget.
• Give thanks for the stages. Every slab poured is a step. Mark them. They are evidence that the work is moving, even slowly.

The Builder is not finished

When we pray “change me, Lord”, we are asking for a construction project. It will involve dust and noise and some discomfort. There will be seasons when nothing seems to be happening, like a house left for three years while the family saves. And there will be days when we can see, almost suddenly, that a new room has been added: a patience we did not have before, a habit broken, a relationship restored.

The steel in the roof is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that someone intends to keep building. Paul’s confidence was not in the Philippians’ progress but in God’s faithfulness. That is a good place for our confidence too, whether we are looking at a concrete roof or looking in the mirror.

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