the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
Click here to join the effort!
Daily Devotionals
Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
"A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." Those words by Frank Lloyd Wright reveal the highly challenging competition in architecture to create a design that is so stunning so as to leave one breathless. From time to time such efforts do reap a bounty of homes that are a trifle unattractive to say the least. Sometimes, when architects push the envelope, the envelope gets torn and wadded.
I have seen homes that just were not my taste that received rave reviews from architectural digests. And I have seen homes that even the architects that designed them wept over their appearance. A man in Utica, New York complained about an architect's drawing when it was given to the builder. The architect told the builder to go ahead and build it just as he had drawn it. The builder did as he was told and the man had a home with two rooms that no one could enter for lack of doors. It happens.
Concept homes are just that, a concept. They are based on someone's idea in their mind rather than something that exists which reflects both stability and beauty. Some concept homes have been groundbreakers while others have been heartbreakers. Some have been elegant and stately while others have been garish. The right combination of building materials and the right plan for appearance and a house becomes a treasure of architectural genius.
I asked an architect in North Central Ohio once if he would recommend using gold, silver and precious stones for the building of a house. His response was a question. "Do you mean as overlays or inlays inside the house?" "No," I answered. "As the main building supplies." He informed me that the stones would be cost prohibitive as would the gold and silver, but the gold and silver would not be firm enough to make bricks which would be supportive of the structure. They'd make lousy building materials.
"Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw, each one's work will become manifest; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is." 1 Corinthians 3:12, 13 God's instructions for building the Christian life goes more to the value and quality of the building materials. God wants a life with worth based in Him. The gold, silver and precious stones are the valuable things of God. If He says build with them, we better. He's the Master Architect.
'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' Copyright 2010 © Tom Kelley. 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' articles may be reproduced in whole under the following provisions: 1) A proper credit must be given to the author at the end of each story, along with their complete bio and a link to https://www.studylight.org/ 2) 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' content may not be arranged or "mirrored" as a competitive online service.
