Remembering Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
When I was in middle school, my mom worked for a local builder. This was right before the financial and housing crash of 2008, so business was very good. They were building homes left and right, and the industry in my small hometown was booming with construction jobs. She learned very intimately the process of building a home and helped walk buyers through that as a part of her role.
Right around this time, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was the big show to watch on TV. The original series ran from 2003 until 2012 and took up a large slot on the Friday night lineup. I remember being so amazed at the beautiful houses, the creative and fun kids' rooms, and the emotion of the families whose lives had been changed by the show.
But after my mom began working with the local builder, the show lost a bit of its luster for her. The premise was that they would tear down and rebuild a brand new house in one week. The drama always came from a tight timeline; would they ever complete it?! But of course, they always did. But she would say, “Just the foundation alone takes longer than a week to complete if it is good. We can’t rush the foundation because without it the house won’t stand.”
I thought of her words this week as I read our passage for Sunday from Matthew 7. Jesus has just completed the Sermon on the Mount, and says, “Those who hear my words and do them are like people who build their houses on a solid rock.” (the Allee paraphrase) After a lot of tough words and discussion, Jesus ends his sermon by saying that a wise person would follow him and live out his words in the way they constructed their lives. Those that aren’t wise build their houses on shifting sands and pay the price.
It is safe to say that our foundation matters. It matters when you are building a house, and it matters when you are building faith. If we aren’t grounded in Scripture, prayer, spiritual disciplines, and committed to growth, we can easily build our house on the shifting sands of this life: fleeting financial stability, promises of family or loved ones, accolades, or impressive resumes, the praise of others. We will find each time we build our house on anything other than Jesus’s teaching that we will not be able to withstand the storms of life; or if we do, that it is much harder.
Suntree UMC is committed to walking with you no matter where you are in your faith journey. We have many resources including our Launch into Extraordinary Love to help you locate where you are on your faith journey, and take the next step. After a year turned over by COVID-19, many of us are ready to take that next step again and grow, both virtually and in person.
As in Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, reality TV is not really "real". Many people have reported later that the homes that were built were difficult to maintain, or the family couldn’t afford the property taxes. The foundation that we build in our spiritual lives is different. When we say yes to Jesus, we get the joy of spending the rest of our lives working on our foundation and keeping our houses on solid rock. When life gets stormy and hard, we hope that you’ll find opportunities to continue to grow into and build your faith. Our Jesus is trustworthy and safe, and the solid rock of our church and our faith.