June 17, 2025

Hi Friends,

I saw it and my heart dropped a bit. I had known it was coming — it always comes — but I hadn’t expected it so soon. A fine, corpuscle of a crack has appeared in the concrete of the patio next to our house. I realized, yet again, that living in a beautiful new house does not take away the responsibilities and duties that come with being a home owner. If you have something, you have to be faithful to maintain it.

To be fair, we did nothing wrong in laying this concrete. Re-bar was inserted into the foundation of the house and extended to the edge of the patio. The concrete mix was a good one. The problem is that we poured this pad in Calgary where our alluvial soil always heaves. You will not find poured concrete without cracks. Frankly, that is cold comfort to me.

The crack in the concrete is only one reality I must face. We’ve also noticed wasps flying in and out of the joints of a wooden planter I built at the edge of the patio. The beautiful fence we built is already fading from the natural colour of the wood and needs to be treated. The siding that sets the house apart has been treated but will need to be treated again in a couple of years. The work to maintain, while not as hard, is an obligation that comes with attainment of ownership or accomplishment. Perhaps maintenance is the real test of our attainment.

Jesus once asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” It’s one thing to find faith or to act in faith; it’s quite another to live a life of being faithful. The Cambridge online dictionary defines faithful as: “firm and not changing in your friendship with or support for a person or an organization, or in your belief in your principles.”

Faithfulness involves dealing with the obstacles to being faithful in the first place. When you read about the kings of Israel and Judah, they are often depicted as either removing the shrines to other gods or not doing so. It goes without saying that the unfaithful kings did not remove the shrines and allowed their people to continue in compromised worship.

What are the temptations to faithlessness in your life? Don’t just think in terms of “religious” things. What tempts you to conform to the world’s patterns, opinions or rules? What practices bring out your lack of self-control, anger, fear, or other actions and emotions which are contrary to a life of faith? These are the cracks in your patio. They may be insignificant right now but, if left unattended, they will ruin what you have built. If you think about it for very long, I’m pretty sure that you don’t want that.

I’ll close for this week by encouraging you with one other phrase from Jesus, “He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much;” and a question from the prophet, Zechariah, “Who dares despise the day of small things …?” Faithfulness is paying attention to the “small things.”

Blessings!

Doug