Are You Building That Wall Beside Your House?

Sometimes ago, I was listening to some motivational speaker talking about purpose and impact in life. According to the fellow, until I have the vision to make a big impact that will cause a dent in the world, I have not started living. I was worried, I decided to fast and pray to ask God for the big vision that I can pursue to cause a dent in the world. In response, he said to me, the impact is not in doing big things but doing the little things with a big heart.

In the wake of the lockdown in 2020, I decided to study the book of Nehemiah and I found something profound that further buttress this.

In chapter 3. Nehemiah was giving the account of the various people that help him work on the project of building the wall of Jerusalem.

Just to give us a perspective, look at verses 1-3 “Then Eliashib the High Priest and the other priests rebuilt the wall as far as the Tower of the Hundred and the Tower of Hananel; then they rebuilt the Sheep Gate, hung its doors, and dedicated it. Men from the city of Jericho worked next to them, and beyond them was the work crew led by Zaccur (son of Imri) The Fish Gate was built by the sons of Hassenaah; they did the whole thing—cut the beams, hung the doors, and made the bolts and bars”

There we see how far people were labouring building walls, mounting gates and all. Then in verse 10, I saw something very interesting. Verse 10 says that “Jedaiah (son of Harumaph) repaired the wall beside his own house”

My first reaction was why would Nehemiah give prominence to recording such a lazy job. Why was he getting credit for repairing the wall beside his house when other people were out there building Kilometers worth of wall.

On the surface, it looks like the guy did a lazy job focusing on just the broken wall beside his house. In reality, however, ‘IF ONLY EVERYBODY CAN FOCUS ON BUILDING THE WALL BESIDE THEIR HOUSE FIRST’ before we know it, the whole city will be built. There won’t be the need for one man getting overworked.

In the end, every part of the broken walls in our society is close to one person or the other, if you focus on the broken wall next to you and I focus on the broken wall next to me, very soon there won’t be any broken wall left.

So, while it’s good to try and fix all the broken walls, it might just be effective to start first with the one beside our house-that your house girl, that young person looking up to you, that mallam by your gate, that woman next door, that your colleague in the office…. broken walls everywhere. We can’t fix them all but we can fix some, starting with the ones besides our house.

May God open our eyes to see all the little broken walls around us and grant us the grace to be able to rebuild them.