Anyone who has watched a house go up in a Jamaican district knows the day the concrete roof is cast is not an ordinary day. Neighbours turn up with shovels and buckets. Someone has the pot going from early morning. By evening there is food, music, a few speeches and a great deal of advice about what the owner should have done differently. The house has no windows yet, the floor is still marl and the bathroom is a plan on paper. Nobody seems to mind. The roof is on, and that is worth a party.
There is wisdom in that custom that the rest of our lives could borrow. Most of us save our celebrations for the finish line: the keys in hand, the final mortgage payment, the last coat of paint. Meanwhile the long middle stretch, which is where most of life actually happens, goes by without thanks.
The long middle
Consider a couple who bought a lot on the edge of town eight years ago. They built the foundation in the first year, then ran out of money. The blocks went up two years later. A cousin in Birmingham sent money for the steel. The roof waited for a promotion that took longer than expected. For much of that time, if you had asked them how the house was coming along, they would have sighed and said, “Slowly.”
But look at that list again. A lot bought. A foundation laid. Walls up. Help from family abroad. Each of those was a real achievement, won from wages that also had to cover school fees, a sick parent and a car that kept breaking down. The trouble is that when you only measure yourself against the finished house, every stage in between feels like failure.
Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14, NKJV). The word that catches me there is “always”. Not only at the end of the procession, but all the way along it. Thanks is not a payment we make when God finally delivers. It is the posture of people who believe He is leading even when the road is long.
What celebrating early does to us
Marking small milestones is not about pretending everything is fine. The roof-casting crowd can see perfectly well that the house has no windows. What celebration does is shift attention from what is missing to what has been given. That shift matters for at least three reasons.
It keeps us going. People who notice progress are more likely to keep making it. A household that pauses to say, “We paid off the credit card this year,” has a reason to tackle the next debt. A household that only sees the balance still owing on the loan can lose heart and stop trying.
It brings others in. The roof casting is a community event. The neighbour who mixed concrete now has a small share in that house. When we celebrate openly, we give friends and family a chance to rejoice with us, and we remember we did not build alone.
It guards against envy. Social media shows us everyone else’s finished kitchens. Our own half-tiled floor looks shabby in comparison. Deliberate thanksgiving for what we have is one of the best defences against the slow poison of comparison.
Milestones worth marking
Not every celebration needs a pot of curry goat. Some are as simple as a family prayer at the kitchen table or a note on the calendar. But it helps to name the moments on purpose, because we rarely notice them otherwise.
- The first month you paid the rent without borrowing from anyone.
- The day the title came through, or the surveyor’s pegs went into the ground.
- Clearing a debt, however small.
- A child getting a room of their own, even if it is only partitioned with plywood for now.
- Water finally running from the tap instead of the drum.
- The year you gave something to someone else’s building project.
Planning the party before the victory
There is a kind of faith that plans ahead. The farmer who clears the field before the rain comes is not being foolish. He is acting on what he believes about the seasons. In the same way, a family can plan for the house-blessing before the house is finished: who they will invite, which passage they will read, what they will cook. That is not presumption, as long as it is held with open hands. It is hope with a guest list.
The Israelites returning from exile laid the foundation of the temple long before the building was complete, and they sang and shouted when they did (Ezra 3:10-11). Some of the older people wept, remembering what had been lost. Both the joy and the tears were honest. Celebration does not require us to forget the struggle. It simply refuses to let the struggle have the last word.
A different measure
Perhaps your house is at the foundation stage. Perhaps you are still renting and saving, or sending money home for a project you will not see for years. Perhaps a setback has pushed everything back further than you hoped. Whatever stage you are at, there is something to give thanks for today, and someone who would gladly give thanks with you.
So cook the food. Call the neighbours. Say the prayer over the bare blocks. The house is not finished, but neither is God, and He has a habit of leading His people in triumph all the way home.
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