Oh, where do we begin -- the rubble or our sins?
~"Pompeii" by Bastille
My favorite line from this popular song asks an important and sobering question which is relevant to all of us. The rubble in our lives is easy to see, and tends to be our first focus when something goes wrong. We turn our attention to picking up the pieces and trying to fix our problems by painstakingly putting the broken bits back together. Maybe it's because the effect is so much easier to identify and deal with than the cause. Once life is back to normal, we think, then we can take care of the issues that started the whole mess in the first place.
Nehemiah was a man who had to deal with a whole lot of rubble. When the news came to him that Jerusalem lay in ruins, and such ruins that a donkey could not even get through the streets, Nehemiah immediately began, not with the rubble . . . but with his sins. He said to God, "I pray before You now . . . and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned" (Nehemiah 1:6). Nehemiah knew that the rubble was only a visible result of the inward condition of his people's souls, himself included. So he began with their sins, and God then used him mightily to repair the rubble.
Of course, the rubble in Nehemiah's day still required a whole lot of work once the sin issue had been addressed, and so will the rubble in our own lives. But where we choose to begin will go a long way to determine our attitude and approach to the restoration process, and thus, the outcome. Where will you begin?