Few lessons I have learned remain as ingrained as lessons learned via construction. I remember watching Granddaddy (my stepfather’s father) known to most by his nickname ‘Frog’ (he was short and squat) and to us as Papa, lay block. He had arthritic but strong hands with large, sunburned knuckles. Though a small man by stature, he and his sons hefted cinder blocks like they were loaves of bread, right into place, as he’d eyeball the line, and we’d pop chalk lines and lay a 2X4 down and check for plumb, and he’d lay block till the sun set. I can still see him sitting on an upside-down 5-gallon bucket, chewing his Levi Garrett chewing tobacco, hefting silver concrete blocks with his short Popeye muscular arms with freckles on them from too much time laboring in Dixie’s relentless sun.

I never knew then that I was storing up backaches and blisters that I’d give anything now to recapture, because as he laid that block, and I hauled studs from the driveway to the foundation, and we built floor joists, and I imbibed the smells of pine and cedar, and learned about pine knots, and warped vs. straight boards, and learned how to hammer well, and how my stepfather seemed to understand wood craftsmanship in ways that were almost mystical to me, it was magical to me. I was enchanted. Because it enraptured the senses.

We’d peel off our shirts of the evening, and they’d be salty with sweat, and we’d sometimes get burgers from the Dairy Queen in the summer evenings, or we’d get a BBQ sandwich from Scott’s, our local BBQ place, and drink sweet tea amidst the evening abuzz with mosquitoes and fireflies.

But what was happening, I now see, was that a foundation was being laid. I learned the smell of toil, love, hard work, and of what it meant to craft a home from hands that cared. It was not secondhand life, but firsthand. And that made all the difference.

What does this have to do with Scriptural foundations? Much, at least in my view. In the biblical worldview, Scripture directs the people of God in how we are to glorify and enjoy God. (Matthew 19:4-5, Genesis 2:24; Luke 24:27, 44, and 1 Corinthians 2:13, and Deuteronomy 4:2, e.g. speak to this.)

Scripture, God’s words to His people, tells us not only what to believe (i.e., what is true) but what we’re to do:

(John 5:39 and 20:31, for example, speak to this, as does 2 Timothy 3:15. Deuteronomy 10:12-13 applies here, too.)

Encouragement: Foundations are just that–foundational. We are to build upon them. Why? Because they’re fixed. There’s a cornerstone. There’s ‘square’ and ‘plumb’ and ‘straight’–and all of it coheres to build the greatest of homes for those who know these are but foretastes.