By Jeremiah Smith
I woke up yesterday and I realized I had not a single plan for that day, and so the possibilities of what to do were endless. The first thing I decided was to hit the snooze button. After getting out of bed I was much more productive. I ended up doing two things: baking and building.
One of the things I love to do is bake, so I created a wonderful blueberry-apple crisp. It was delicious. I’ve decided to call it “humble crumble”. The second pursuit was building a bookcase. I’ve realized I have far too many books and no place to put them. However my baking skills are much better then my woodworking skills. Needless to say I now have a rather crooked, albeit functional structure to house my books. In hindsight I realized there was a crucial design flaw in my plans. I should have created a true foundation as a point of reference for everything else. Instead I tried to fit two pieces together that although close were different by a few millimeters. In that moment I felt as if God was speaking these words,
“without a true foundation the structure will be crooked”
These words reminded me of a story told by Ravi Zacharias
Postmodernism tells us there’s no such thing as truth; no such thing as meaning; no such thing as certainty. I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts. He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.” I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?” He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.” I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?” He said, “That is correct.” I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?” All of a sudden there was silence. You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry.
