Abandoned Foundations

When is the last time you saw a foundation? Possibly it was a new restaurant being built or new home that someone is anxiously waiting to be completed. Anything that is going to last the test of time needs a good solid foundation, so it’s understandable that we would see the foundations being built for those structures. How deep is a good foundation though? Clay Risen at Popular Science wrote an article about the process of constructing the Shanghai Tower, which is the world’s 3rd tallest building yet at 2,073 feet. “Shanghai is in an earthquake zone, and the site (which is located on a river delta) has soft, clay-heavy soil. So before lifting a single steel beam, engineers drove 980 foundation piles into the ground as deep as 282 feet. Then they poured 2.15 million cubic feet of reinforced concrete to create an 20-foot-thick foundation mat.” For something as exemplary as one of the tallest buildings in the world, there should be a serious foundation built before anything above ground can take shape.

What would happen if that foundation was built and nothing was built upon it? Take a moment and imagine all the hard work that went into just putting the foundation in place for the Shanghai Tower. All the effort put into something no one will ever see, for the sake of something that everyone will see to be built on top of it. When was the last time that you’ve seen an abandoned foundation? If visible they are usually covered in dirt, dust, and weeds. They leave those that see them with a feeling of “What if?” A strong foundation is necessary before anything worthwhile can be built, but if nothing is built, the foundation is for nothing. You never hear of families going to big cities to look at foundations of skyscrapers, but you especially never hear of them going to see foundations of skyscrapers never built. Anything worth building needs a foundation just as much as the foundation needs something built on it to matter.

The truth of the metaphor is that we have the strongest foundation in Christ. Ephesians 2:19-20 states “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;” With this in mind, we have the great responsibility to build on that foundation something worth looking at. I am not professing vanity or self-promotion by any means. Instead we should be the purest representation of Godly principles and convictions. Paul writes again in Ephesians 4 about our purpose in the church being “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying (Building Up) of the body of Christ” If you read that in reverse, it lays out the building plan perfectly. We are to be building up the body of Christ through the work of ministry for the perfecting of the saints. The foundation of Christ and his crucifixion means nothing if we are not willing to build up the body of Christ. “On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.”

Stand on the Rock and build the body,
Coburn Hoffman