These two bricks sit in the window of my new office. The irony of stacking a memorial of bricks from buildings that no longer exist in the window of a brick building that someday will cease to exist is not lost on me. In fact it’s a poignant reminder each time I turn from my computer to stare out the window and I see them. 

The one with the holes is from the house I grew up in. It was a ranch style, completely brick house. When I see this brick my mind is flooded with memories. I like to tell myself this is the exact brick from the infamous “Babysitting WWE smackdown incident”

When I was about two years old my parents and their friends went out on a date. Their kids were a older enough to babysit so while the parents went out we hung out at our house. In the picture you can see a huge brick fireplace with a long brick hearth. It was a place to put on plays, to jump off and do tricks but it also happens to be the place that 2 year old me fell and split his head wide opened while all the parents were gone. To try and get me to stop crying the other kids found newspaper and wrapped some of my favorite toys as presents for me to open. It didn’t work. Over the years, as that story got told and the legend grew it slowly changed from me falling and cracking my head opened to my friend, mentor and past babysitter practicing her WWE wrestling moves, twirling me in the air, and then body slamming me into the bricks. It’s still one of my favorite memories (even though I don’t remember it…you know 2 years old don’t have great memories and concussions don’t help) but I’ll let you decide what actually happened…

I look at that brick and laugh because of that story. Sometimes I look at it and cry because it reminds me of the fireplace we would sit around when my grandparents came back to the states from their mission work in Grenada. We would stay up late to hear their stories. We’d pretend the power went out and light candles, start a fire and listen to my Pawpaw tell stories late into the evening. Then grandma would sing us a song as we went to bed. 

I’m reminded of the walls of the hall where we used to climb and pretend to be on american gladiators.

The food pantry I would hide in and eat cereal and sugar.

The old motorcycles David Hazel and I used to tinker with and dream about in the run down garage.

The treehouse me and Jacob built.

The basketball goal where Mom (Bonnie) taught me how to shoot that was run over by someone trying to back out of the driveway

The burial ground of Tiffany’s bunny.

The living room where me and Steven Reed beat Halo 1.

The carport where I learned how to rebuild a car I wrecked.

The tower dad (Doug Hall) let me bungie jump off of using an old garage door spring.

The driveway I drove my car out of for the first time.

The yard where Dad would play catch with me…

The sidewalk where mom broke her tailbone trying to teach me to skateboard…

The backyard me and my cousins tried to camp on the trampoline in…

The closet Tiff and Katie locked me in… (I’m terribly claustrophobic)

The freezer me and Jacob would hide in and eat otter pops

And countless other memories. 

Then I look at the other brick. It’s from the brickyard at NC State University where I first attended college. It’s famous for being a campus built of almost nothing but bricks. Some think it’s ugly. Others see the true beauty. I grabbed this brick from right outside the old math building, Harrelson Hall. 

Harrelson Hall was a round building with no right angles. Classrooms were awkward, bathrooms were worse but the cool part about the building was the round-about style ramp that went all the way up the building. One night a buddy and I snuck into Harrelson and rode our skateboards all the way down the ramp from the top of the building to the bottom. 

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Right outside Harrelson, in the brickyard is the manhole that my best friend and I climbed down into when my dad revealed to us the old steam tunnels that run all under NCSU’s campus. We explored them for hours and only realized the next day that it was a crime punishable by expulsion. Whoops. 

What do both of these bricks have in common? They both came from places that don’t exist anymore. 

My childhood home was torn a little over a year ago. Harrelson Hall was demolished in 2016 and the bricks around the building were removed to create a new walking path and green space. 

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Those buildings are gone. I don’t keep the bricks in my office as a memorial to the buildings, though. I keep them there to remind myself that everything is temporary. 

My house.

University buildings. 

My job. 

My money. 

My life.

Everything. 

So we can spend our whole lives building these temporary things in hope that maybe one of them will beat the odds and actually last forever, or we can spend our time building something that can actually last. Memories with my kids. Dinner with friends. Time with loved ones. Meals around a table. Hospitality, generosity, inclusion. 

Because while these buildings may be temporary, the names we build for ourselves may be temporary, our jobs, our money, our things may be temporary, the memories we create, the lessons we learn and the stories we share last well into the future. They affect change. They help create a better world. 

But here’s the issue – they can’t do that if we are are so tied to our devices, so tied to our comfort, so tied to making a name for ourselves and building things that don’t last, that we miss them. 

This can sound alarmist, but I know from personal experience. 

4 years ago my family and I moved to Boston so as a 28 year old I could become the new lead pastor of Reunion Christian Church. I believe with my whole heart that God called us and led us here, but I also know I bought the lie from Satan that as a 28 year old I could make a name for myself and as a young lead pastor I had something to prove. Some days I would get into the office at 6:30am and not leave until 7pm because I wanted to prove to everyone that I worked the hardest and that I was the right person for the job. Beth would plan vacations for our family and i would use the excuse of “I’m new at the job and can’t be gone yet, I need to establish myself first”, so my wife, 2 year old and 3 month old would load up in the car, drive to her family and I would stay behind working 20 hour days because I needed to make a name for myself. Who knows the countless memories, lessons and stories I missed in those season. And not because I was doing something important, honestly I can’t tell you what half the work was, but because I was trying to make a name for myself. Trying to build something for myself. 

One September night by dad called and said he bought tickets to see our favorite artist, Tom Petty, in concert. It would be a father/son bonding night with an artist that we had shared a love for over the years. My response was, “it’s a really busy season at work, I don’t think I can take the time off”. 

And then about a year ago, we woke up on a Saturday morning, the boys came in our room and Finley said, “Can we go to the park today?? I want a family day” I said, “Absolutely buddy I would love that.” We laid in silence for a while and then Finley said, “Dad, can you not bring your phone? It also makes you stop playing catch with me…”

I don’t know what I was always doing on my phone but I can guarantee it was either posting to social media to build a life and persona I wanted others to see, or it was answering texts and email about work. None of those posts or emails are things I remember but I remember the look in my son’s eyes when he asked me to spend time with him. 

Now, I could go into statistics on these things, or I could point you to the Tower of Babel people seeking to make a name for themselves through their achievements and the irony of God’s promise just one chapter later to Abraham, that God would make a name for Abram, all Abram was meant to do was follow God and bless the world, but those are blogposts for another day. 

For now, I want to encourage you. Invest in what will last. Not buildings. Not names. Not jobs. Not money. But people. Meals around a table. Memories at a concert. Time spent praying for one another and time spent simply being with one another, no other agenda or distractions. 

If you need me, that’s where I’ll be. Around a table with my friends, my neighbors, strangers, and my family. You can text me or email me, but fair warning it may take a while to get a response, I’m focused on some other things right now… 🙂