I stand at the window, looking at rubble! Outside is a building site -literally! I see workers with hard hats, cranes, spades, stacks, stones…

They are building.

I also see artistic stones, beautiful paving, curved steps, stylised walls prepared soil and the arrival of plants. I see the plan forming. What they are building will be beautiful. Now is just the mess of the making.

From rubble to shaping.

From rubble to purpose.

Nehemiah looked around – and the first thing he saw was rubble: broken walls, broken protection, broken hearts, broken hope. He also saw something else – the vision to build.

As stone met stone, the builders came together, gained encouragement, gained self-esteem, became a community once more.

The enemies could mock all they wanted about the build-a-wall project, but it was the building of community that bothered them; the re-building of people that they were fighting against.

This wasn’t any old community – it was people of faith, standing again, strengthening each-other, working together and finding that with God, they need not stay defeated.

From the placing of the very first stone, the enemy was right to be worried.