Fiction. This is a made-up story. The people and events are not real, and any resemblance to real people is coincidental. It is written to teach a lesson, the way Jesus taught with parables. The Bible verse at the end is quoted word for word from the King James Version, which is in the public domain.
Part of our guide: Liftoff: A guide for families and young adults · Stories & Parables.
Jada is nineteen and smarter than I ever was. She came over for Sunday dinner and told me her plan for her nursing prerequisite: skip the reading, watch the videos at double speed the week before the final, and pull an all-nighter.
"It worked in high school, Grandma," she said.
So I took her out to the porch steps. Your grandfather built those steps the summer we moved in. He spent three weekends just digging and pouring the footings. I thought he was wasting time. You couldn't even see that part.
Our neighbor built his steps the same summer, in one weekend, right on top of the dirt. They looked just as nice. Nicer, maybe; he painted his.
Then we got the big storm. The yard flooded for two days. When the water went down, the neighbor's steps had pulled away from the house and tipped sideways. Ours didn't move. They still haven't, and that was forty years ago.
Jada rolled her eyes a little, the way she does. But she sat there a while. Then she asked me to quiz her on her flashcards every Sunday until the final.
She got a B-plus. She told me the all-nighter kids were "cooked." I had to ask her what that meant.
The lesson
The part nobody sees, the steady work done week after week, is what holds when pressure comes. Hearing good advice isn't enough; Jesus said the wise builder is the one who hears and does.
This story echoes the parable of the wise and foolish builders (Matthew 7:24-27).
“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
Talk about it
- Whose side of this story have you been on?
- What would you have done in the same spot?
- What is one way to live this lesson out this week?
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