Building the World

Photo by Sergey Klimkin (courtesy of pixabay.com)

Builders or Wreckers?

     A short time ago I watched workmen tearing down an old building. A huge crane swung back and forth, smashing the bricks and walls with battering blows. Debris scattered everywhere. Trucks came and waited for the steam shovel to fill them with the old mortared bricks, splintered wood, and broken glass. Within a few hours, a building that had taken months to construct, was a mass of rubble.

     In the days that followed, as I walked by this same block, I saw a new, beautiful building rise toward the sky. Men walked with blueprints in hand. No careless movements here; no unplanned work.

     It is comparatively easy to be a wrecker. No special skill is required. Just stay clear of the falling debris.

    Every life has a flaw within it--like an old building. When Dwight L. Moody (American evangelist-1837-1899) had finished speaking, a man said, "Your English is poor. Can you not speak better?" Moody replied, "I am doing the best I can for the Lord with what I have; how about you?" Moody was building; the man was wrecking.

     Builders are needed today. The world is not hopeless. Neither are the hearts of men. The materials for world peace lie about us. We have discovered power that will lift nations from poverty. We have a world consciousness that did not exist prior to the Twentieth Century. But a generation of builders is needed.

    

by Harleigh M. Rosenberger 

(from Sunshine Magazine, February 1962)