What a Pharisee Sees

I stare at the sign for about eight and a half hours.

Master Builder. Master Builder.... The Master Builder.

Then I slowly turn around and look at the footprints.

Prints. Of feet. 

Big feet.

Little feet.

I think of this house that we call our home.

The place where we hang mirrors, and family photos and children’s artwork on the walls. The place where we cook and eat. Sleep and play. Make love and pray. Read and work. Watch America's Funniest Home Videos and 60 minutes, The Avengers and Ratatouille, How to Train Your Dragon and Up.

This is where we grow cabbage, bury pets, grieve our losses, heal our broken bodies and broken hearts.

Where we touch and feel the love of God by tickling the feet and clipping the toenails. Where we learn to listen and wait, ask questions and fight fair; have fun and clean up our messes after we had fun. The place where the multicolored grace of God, the rich texture of God's Word takes on tangible forms through hospitality and solitude, beauty and pain, exhaustion and rest, heartbreak and forgiveness.

The place that on some days is the shelter from the storm, and on others becomes the eye of a hurricane and a center of a tornado and a tsunami all at once.

This house, designed and built by somebody, is so much more than its driveway - dirty, clean and everything in-between.

Just as there is more, so much more to this footprint and the person that left it behind than the speck of dirt left on the sidewalk.