Our office overlooks Jerusalem Street. It is a busy street, made even more active with the construction of three new apartment buildings in the space of a city block. It is not unusual to see materials floating by the window as massive cranes move everything from heavy loads of rebar to the memorable occasion of a porta potty.
The buildings begin with a hole in the ground: a deep, muddy absence of the previous wildflowers or fruit trees or parking lot. The holes are guarded by metal fencing and often hard-hatted men directing traffic. It’s not unusual for parents to lift their kids up on their shoulders to look over the fence and see how deep the hole is or if the start of the foundations or ground floor are visible yet. 
These building sites are disruptive. Parking patterns have to be changed. Sometimes the road is closed. Sometimes neighboring buildings have to go without electricity or without water for a couple hours. There is more noise—welding, hammering, yelling, back-up beeps from the heavy equipment. Green spaces that used to have wildflowers and an apple or pear tree or two are now gone, replaced by metal fencing, soaring cranes, and concrete structures.
But imagine the finished apartment. A family moves in. A baby is born and maybe a second one. The kids go to the neighborhood preschool and on to the secondary school a few blocks over, eventually graduating. Maybe they stay home and go to college in Sofia, inviting their friends over. Maybe one day the son brings his girlfriend to meet the family, or the daughter’s fiancé comes to get her for the wedding. In essence, where there is currently dead concrete and mud, there may someday be a place where life thrives.
There’s a reminder to me as I look at the floating building materials outside my office window day in and day out. The gospel is a lot like that building site. It challenges my lack of love and compassion, exposing the “muddy pit” of my sinful self-love. But it also has hope, just as the promise of a finished construction project offers hope. There’s a someday home at the end of the journey. My spiritual life is reflected in that construction site. The mess is worth going through, because it is through the hard that the good is discovered, treasured, and shared with others.