“Unless the Lord builds the house,
Its builders labor in vain…” Psalm 127: 1

I recently finished Beth Moore’s study Stepping Up on the Psalms of Ascent (Psalm 120-134), and, as usual, after completing an enriching Bible study, I’m not quite ready to move on. I’ve felt the nudging of the Spirit to do a Lectio on one of these psalms, and so, this morning I chose Psalm 127.

Immediately upon first reading, this word lept out at me: unless. What a marvelous word! My whole life, dear Lord, my decades of testimony, can be summed up in this one word: unless.

To put it another, less concise way, “If it hadn’t been for…”

Unless YOU had been with me…If it hadn’t been for YOUR presence in my life…

That is my testimony. The psalm says it well. Unless the Lord does it, it’s in vain. Oh, Lord, how I love the redemption implied in these verses. All of my life has been the story of Your redeeming grace.

Because if You hadn’t been there, indeed, in those quiet, terrifying moments of perceived desperation, who knows what I would have done.

Actually, I have a good idea.

But because of You, dear Lord, my life hasn’t been in vain. You have faithfully built up my house, my temple where You indwell. I would have let it crumble, Lord, on my own, overwhelmed by all of life’s demands and cruelties. My penchant for melancholy and perfectionism would have destroyed me.

But oh, happy day! That word: Unless!

From my earliest days, You have been with me, to comfort, encourage, challenge, whisper hope, and turn my eyes from self-gazing to Your beautiful face.

All this You have done by Your amazing, saving power in my heart. In my inner man.

But there’s a much broader application of ‘unless’ in my life. You have blessed me with other ‘houses’—my dear family of origin and the family of God, Your family. And then, You blessed me with a family of my own from Your gift of marriage to cherish and raise to Your glory.

How often this psalm encouraged me when our boys were tots, and I was tired. You were there to build my house, and it would not be in vain.

You know, also, dear Lord, how often I’ve smiled at that verse that says “In vain you get up early…” How I do not like to get up early! And even as I smile, I learn to recognize my rhythms, rhythms embedded in my DNA, so that I kindly accept my limitations (kindly!

No shame, no guilt—oh, that has taken Your persistent prodding to get through my thick head) so that I live and serve You with the giftings and personality You have given me.

Be kind to yourself, Lizzie. Put Me first, let Me be in charge, rest and work, rest and work, as I build Your house.

And Lord, in Your abundant kindness and good humor, You have given us physical houses to build! Back in 1992, I prayed these verses daily as we attempted to buy a house, a very small house with a small yard on our small missionary salary.

And, You, as the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, in a blink provided me with an inheritance from an elderly and senile woman who had been my neighbor when I was a child. She had followed our ministry for all of these years, and, unbeknownst to me, left me, not a hundred dollars, as I had supposed when my father informed me that I was in her will. No, she’d left me enough money for a down payment on a very small house in the south of France.

And as that house became our home, You filled it, not only with our boys, but also with so, so many precious ‘children’ in the family of God, and many other seekers. The arrows in our quiver, as the last verse in Psalm 127 states. You built our house and blessed it as we served You in our bumbling, humble way.

And then…

You called us to another town to serve, and we sold that sweet house that You’d provided—which amazingly had nearly tripled in value over the decade we owned it—and so You provided another house in a bigger city with a bigger yard in which there was a tool shed which we transformed into my writing chalet where I could pen my stories.

Looking at the physical things in our home, I get to tell the story of Your faithfulness, because every piece of furniture, every photo (yes, there are hundreds), every piece of pottery and porcelain, all the accessories, tell one story—the story of a God who provides in the most surprising ways.

Unless, Lord. Unless You.

Which brings me to the obvious next word: because.

Because of You, my life has not been in vain. Because of Your saving, keeping, sustaining, supernatural and delightfully surprising power, my house stands on a firm foundation and will not crumble.

Because, when someone, anyone, is in You, You care for Your own, and that life is not lived in vain.

I’d love to hear how you have seen God’s Unless and Because in your life.