Build Upon It

Labor Day, Part Two

Like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it.

— 1 Corinthians 3

If your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.

— Matthew 6

Labor Day is about work. Yesterday's readings reminded us to ask God to “prosper the work of our hands.”

Today's readings make me wonder about something else.

What do my hands—and my eyes—do to the work of somebody else?

Paul describes himself as a “skilled master builder” who has laid a foundation. But then he says something easily overlooked:

“Someone else is building on it.”

That's how much of life works.

We do something today that somebody else will encounter tomorrow. We teach a child who eventually teaches somebody else. We establish a business that someone else inherits. We build a church, compose a song, start a program, repair a house, raise a family, write something, make something.

We may never see what gets built upon it.

That's one reason I've always been a little suspicious of expressions like “You do you,” or “It's my own private thing; it isn't hurting anybody.”

Very little of human life is completely private.

Our work affects other people. So does our enthusiasm. So does our discouragement.

Someone once told me about completing a handicraft after investing considerable time and concentration in it. A trusted elder family member saw the finished work—and said nothing. Perhaps no hurt was intended. Perhaps the person was particularly distracted in that moment.

But silence can communicate something too.

The person who creates something is laying a little foundation. We can build upon it—or chip away at it.

That brings me to Jesus' curious teaching about the eye. A healthy eye fills the body with light; an unhealthy one fills it with darkness.

What am I training my eye to see?

I've watched this play out lately in entertainment. A television franchise continues with a new program such as Boston Blue. A legendary band like Chicago continues performing after decades of personnel changes. Some people find enormous joy in what is being built now. Others seem unable to encounter the new work except by comparing it with what came before.

Of course we can prefer the original. We can dislike the new version altogether.

But there is a difference between not enjoying somebody's work and needing to diminish it for the people who do.

And that's where I need to examine my own eye.

Have I become so accustomed to looking for what is wrong, inferior, changed or missing that I can no longer see what somebody is creating right in front of me?

Darkness spreads that way.

Fortunately, so does light.

Yesterday I heard Glen Campbell's old song “Try a Little Kindness,” and perhaps for the first time I really listened to it.

What an appropriate Labor Day instruction.

Try a little kindness toward somebody else's work.

Notice it. Ask about it. Encourage the person learning the skill. Applaud somebody else's craftsmanship. Support the new person taking over an old responsibility. And when somebody builds upon a foundation laid by people who came before, don't require the new work to become a museum exhibit dedicated to the old.

Build something good yourself.

Then help somebody else build.

Paul laid a foundation. Somebody else built upon it.

That's not a threat to the foundation.

That's what foundations are for.

So on this Labor Day, may God prosper the work of our hands.

And may He give us healthy eyes to recognize—and perhaps even rejoice in—the work of everybody else's.

Try a little kindness.

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