Text: It’s a short psalm from Solomon. Its wisdom remains:

1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
    those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the watchman stays awake in vain.
² It is in vain that you rise up early
    and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
    for he gives to his beloved sleep.

³ Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
    the fruit of the womb a reward.
⁴ Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
    are the children of one’s youth.
⁵ Blessed is the man
    who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
    when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127, ESV)

The Matter of Definition: “Mission creep” is military jargon for a loss of focus upon the initial mission. Mission creep is usually accompanied by many qualifiers and exception clauses, to such a degree that the initial point of the mission gets blurred, obfuscated, or even lost.

Question: When it comes to our ethical and moral leadership, how much more important is it that we fight to prevent mission creep? In plain language, we ought to be diligent to “keep the main thing the main thing.” The fundamentals, in other words. “Putting first things first” is the way a curriculum I often teach soldiers phrases it.

To revisit the question, then, When it comes to our ethical and moral leadership, how much more important is it that we fight to prevent mission creep? This is one more example of God’s wisdom for all who will heed it. Solomon, a man who was often the sage (and other times the fool), he reminds us in the 127th psalm that it is possible to “labor in vain” (Ps 127:1a, ESV).

How’s it possible to labor in vain? Well, if we labor for the merely temporal, we forfeit the eternal. As Paul phrases it, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18, ESV).

Christ himself phrases it this way: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Mt 16:26, ESV)

Teaching: Throughout the 127th psalm Solomon emphasizes the same theme: We can work ourselves to the bone, but if we’ve built on foundations of sand, the edifice is fatally compromised and will both fail and fall. Why? Because it was not founded upon the truth. It was a house of cards.

Encouragement/takeaway: Let us admit that the easiest thing in the world is to be distracted. This is surely the Age of Distraction. That’s mission creep by another name. Mission effectiveness, hearing “Well done, good and faithful servant/[soldier]” requires laboring for that which endures because it is founded upon truth.