Little People, Big Projects, and the Purposes of God

By Rick Thomas

I recently cut the shrubbery that grows in our front yard. I cut one row of shrubs about two months ago and I was eager to finish the job. I wanted all of our shrubbery to look as much alike as possible. Tristen, our under two-year-old, was also eager; she wanted to serve by helping me with the project.

There are basically two ways I can look at this opportunity. I could view Tristen’s efforts as a real annoyance because her help can stretch a simple five-minute project into a two-hour (or two day!) ordeal. Or I could view Tristen’s desire as an opportunity to build my relationship with her and teach her many wonderful things in the process. For me, the completion of the project became a secondary issue when I chose relationship building to be my priority.

I want to choose relationship building as my philosophy for household projects. For example, a few weeks ago Tristen and I installed a ceiling fan in the master bedroom of our home as an anniversary gift for Lucia, my wife and Tristen’s mother. Hanging that ceiling fan became a several hour project as Tristen enjoyed climbing up and down the six-foot ladder. She found pure pleasure in showing me her ability to climb to the top. Tristen laughed with joy while experiencing a view usually reserved for grownups.

During our shrubbery project Tristen wanted to ride in the wheelbarrow after I filled it with clippings. Letting her share in the work took much more time to finish, lots of patience to teach, and grace from God to learn. This is where I had to decide what is most important: the project, or the relationship. As most of us have learned, projects and “to-do” lists are never ending; when one is done there will be another one waiting. In some ways life is one long string of projects until we die. With Tristen’s help, I’m continually learning I need this new philosophy in the way I approach home projects.

Building relationships is a far more enjoyable and much more rewarding way to live life. The funny times, the mess-ups, the experience of doing the job together, the finished product completed by a joint effort, and the teaching lessons learned during the project are all good things that are far more important than the minutes or hours longer it takes to finish the task. In this way of living, the task is merely the context to deepen the relationship.

Another curious note is that by helping me finish the project, Tristen believes she played a big role in serving her Daddy. And that's good. In many ways she did help—though not in actually using the hedge clippers or pushing the wheelbarrow or sweeping up the dirt or shoveling the clippings with a pitchfork. Tristen’s help came in a different way: if she were not there, I would have been the loser. She gave me an opportunity to teach, to exercise patience, to remember my real priorities, to enjoy the company of another human being, to reflect back on a simpler time in life, to observe the beauty of an innocent child's adventure into a brand new experience. Tristen brought life into the drudgery of "just another project". The grand finale came as we stood back to enjoy a task completed together. I held her in my arms and expressed thanksgiving for her willingness to serve her daddy on a weekend project.

Our thoughts inevitably must ascend to God as we think of these earthly affairs. Think of Jesus when he pointed out the lilies of the field and the birds of the air to his disciples. Jesus was giving His disciples a lesson in what it means to trust their heavenly Father (see Matthew 6). By reflecting on home projects and the purposes of God, I can see something of how God, my Father, builds and deepens His relationship with me. While I do believe that my “projects” have significance, I do not believe my Father is as interested in what I do as much as the hope that what I do draws me closer to Him.

Yet it is hard for me to remember this principle. My thoughts inevitably linger too long on “the project” or on my ministry or on other distractions in life rather than on my relationship with my Father. It usually works out with such questions as:

What am I supposed to do with my life?
What is my purpose in life?
What do I want to be when I grow up?
What is God’s will for my life?
What kind of ministry can I get into?

These questions focus on the functional or utilitarian priorities of life rather than on the relational priorities. When what I do becomes the driving motivation in my life as opposed to my relationship with Christ, then I’m simply using God to do “the project”. A functionally motivated person is typically overly moralistic, possibly legalistic or externalistic, and reads his interpretation of Christianity through a filter of projects/activities. But God the Father never put “doing” above “relationship”. The biblical focus of life should not be so much on what we do with our lives but on how deep and intimate our relationship with Christ is.

I am not saying that doing things is irrelevant to the Christian life. But if doing becomes the priority and the mechanism for achieving feelings of acceptance/approval or the basis on which we accept or reject others, then our priorities are wrong. If Tristen’s ability to perform to my expectations were the primary measurement of my acceptance/approval of her, then she and I would not have much of a relationship. What she did or did not do was not the standard for our relationship. Because of this understanding of relational priorities over functional priorities, I could use the task as a vehicle to deepen our relationship and also to teach her better ways to function.

Knowing and enjoying Christ is our primary calling in life. Projects and activities should never rise higher than this chief aim. All of our doing, all of our obedience should be viewed as a vehicle to drive us deeper into the love of God. Unfortunately, in our task-oriented culture where what we do becomes our source of identity and means of acceptance, relational priorities become subservient to utilitarian priorities. In this culture, relationships are viewed as instruments to be used in order to accomplish the tasks that enhance our identity while elevating our stature above others. And that leads to individualism, self-seeking, competitiveness, and shallow relationships with one another.

The extreme doers of the New Testament were the Pharisees. Jesus said of them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.” Matthew 23:27.

On the other hand, the relational people of Scripture were passionate about the Savior and stunned by the Gospel! They never got over the fact that God redeemed them out of slavery to themselves. You see their joy in the Savior erupting all over the New Testament:

John 4:39-the woman at the well could not keep quiet about the Savior.

John 5:15-after being healed by the Savior, this man went and told the Jews of what just happened to him.

John 12:3-Mary so adored the Savior that she anointed his feet and wiped them with the hair on her head.

John 20:11-This Mary stood weeping outside the tomb where the Savior was placed.

Acts 3:8-This man leaped up and began to walk, then entered the temple with the apostles, walking and leaping and praising God.

Revelation 5:11-14-John gave us this great text. “Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands and thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessings!’ And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever?’ And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen!’ and the elders fell down and worshipped.”

What we do with our life is not more important than who we know. As we focus on knowing the Christ more intimately, He will inevitably lead us into more activities that will nuance our understanding, knowledge, and love for him. As my child’s father, I want to lead her into activities where I can show her many things, teach her life principles, illustrate my Heavenly Father to her, as well as deepen our personal relationship with one another. The projects become the means to an end rather than the end itself.