Unless the Lord builds the house. . .

With only two days to go until the Harvest Carnival, many of us are busy with logistics and last minute planning. Many details have yet to fall into place. There are volunteers who still need a task, vendors who still need to return a phone call, diagrams still to draw. As I write, I am surrounded by 84 pounds of beans that still need to be cooked.

In the midst of all of this, some of us gathered to pray last night and were reminded that

¹ Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.

² In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves. (Psalm 127:1-2)

I smiled at "rise early. . .toiling for food to eat" because early this morning Lauren and I were at a restaurant supply store toiling over large packages of meat and vegetables to make tostadas for the carnival. We had fun, and I felt pretty accomplished, crossing a major item off my to-do list. But -- the Lord says that this is in vain if he doesn't come to the carnival to do something powerful and even unexpected.

The volunteers and police officers who will be standing guard are in vain unless the Lord watches over the street. There is so little we can really do to prevent violence, especially on a night that is often about demonic activity. But, the Lord can protect our street.

We can labor and labor, plan extensively for excellent follow-up, but we can't make anyone come to know God or even make someone connect well with a new friend from our church. But, the Lord can bring great change and redemption.

So it is good and right and critically important for us to devote ourselves to prayer these next few days. Pray that God would do a new thing and use this event to build many relationships, even build a new core of believers from our neighborhood who could be pillars of our church in the future! Pray that God will powerfully protect our street from any destructive person or spiritual influence. Pray that everything will come together, not because we labored in vain, but because the Lord built the house.