Psalm 119:7-8 Upright Rebar

My friend Steve invited me on a mission trip to Mexico in 2007. We were taking a group of 30 college students to a town called Villa Union, where we would spend five days doing a construction project for a small congregation.

Steve told me up front that what he needed most from me was to do a lot of driving (24 hours one way), and to help corral the students and keep them on task. He knew that I wasn't going to be a big help in terms of my construction skills. He'd seen first hand why I said I would be scared for my family to live in a house I built myself.

While Steve, who had extensive experience in construction, supervised what had turned out to be two separate construction projects, he assigned me to jobs that I couldn't hardly mess up. Twisting wire. Moving rocks. Straightening rebar.

It's that last one that turned out to be the most difficult. The Mexican preacher quickly showed us how it was done, turning out three perfectly straight bars in just a couple of minutes.

A day later Steve put me together with three students who were as un-handy as I am, and told us we needed to straighten out some of the supposedly-straight rebar that looked more like a herd of snakes in motion.

I knew that Steve, who could do a job like this in his sleep, was working hard not to be impatient with us. I'd heard him grumble on more than one occasion, back in our real lives, about students who wanted to help but only made things more difficult.

But he patiently took a few minutes, which he did not have, to give us a few tips.

After he had moved on to another task, one of the students in my charge looked at Steve's retreating back and then at me, and said, "We don't know how to do this. He could do in half an hour what it's going to take us the rest of the day to do, and a lot better."

"You're right," I told the young man. "Problem is, he doesn't have time to do it. Everyone else is doing other projects. The four of us don't know how to do much of anything on this construction project, but we're the only ones available  to do this job. So let's do the best we can, even if it takes us all day."

It only took us about three hours. I kept my little team working at it until we had that pile of rebar a little bit straighter than it was when we started.

I will praise you with an upright heart 
  as I learn your righteous laws. 
I will obey your decrees; 
  do not utterly forsake me.

Psalm 119:7-8

God could fulfill his mission much more efficiently without having to use a mess-up like me. But he doesn't give up on me. He lets me learn; he lets me grow.

Developing an upright heart is a process. It's a journey through all sorts of experiences that train me in obeying God. Every step I take involves a choice of moving forward in the direction of God's way or meandering off on a path of my own making. 

But as a redeemed child of God, I begin that journey with a grace-cleaned heart. I'm not on my way to earning the title of "upright". I'm on a journey to work out what God has worked in to me.

He doesn't expect me to immediately do things as well as he would. He just expects me to do.