What great project are we on?

Nehemiah 6:3 ” I am carrying out a great project…”

On a regular basis I have ideas. As they arrive in my mind they are all treated as newcomers to the human race, no one could have thought of this before! Like a child with no capacity to keep a secret I get jittery – smile for no reason and can’t wait to let the cat out of the bag.

It can be so soul destroying when you spill the idea onto the table and everyone looks at their coffee and smiles. You know that no one is ready to burst the bubble but fortunately I have a friend who knows just what to say. Never condescending or negative. He just looks at me and says – ah, could this be a call to the planes of Ono!

For those that don’t know it in the book of Nehemiah, a prophet during the period when Israel were drifting back to their land from captivity, he received an invite. Nehemiah was focused – on message and had a clear mission. Everything he did was about bringing materials and people together to rebuild the walls of the city. It was, as these things are, complicated. Not everyone wanted it to happen and in particular three chaps who were dead against it. You’ve met these folk many times!

At a particularly fruitful and somewhat fraught moment in the process Sanballat and his buddy Geshaem invited Nehemiah to a conference at a village on the plain of Ono . It may well have seemed like a good idea. A break – a chance to win these chaps round. But Nehemiah knew it was a distraction, a trap. He sent this clear message “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down…”

I find it a challenge sometimes to stay on task, remain on message and not become distracted. Maybe the answer is to have friends who remind us that we are on a great project already. What great project are you working on today?