This was my reading today:

Isaiah 28

^14-15 Now listen to God’s Message, you scoffers,
    you who rule this people in Jerusalem.
You say, “We’ve taken out good life insurance.
    We’ve hedged all our bets, covered all our bases.
No disaster can touch us. We’ve thought of everything.
    We’re advised by the experts. We’re set.”

^16-17 But the Master, God, has something to say to this:

“Watch closely. I’m laying a foundation in Zion,
    a solid granite foundation, squared and true.
And this is the meaning of the stone:
    a trusting life won’t topple.
I’ll make justice the measuring stick
    and righteousness the plumb line for the building.
A hailstorm will knock down the shantytown of lies,
    and a flash flood will wash out the rubble.

^18-22 “Then you’ll see that your precious life insurance policy
    wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Your careful precautions against death
    were a pack of illusions and lies.
When the disaster happens,
    you’ll be crushed by it.
Every time disaster comes, you’ll be in on it—
    disaster in the morning, disaster at night.”
Every report of disaster
    will send you cowering in terror.
There will be no place where you can rest,
    nothing to hide under.
God will rise to full stature,
    raging as he did long ago on Mount Perazim
And in the valley of Gibeon against the Philistines.
    But this time it’s against you.
Hard to believe, but true.
    Not what you’d expect, but it’s coming.
Sober up, friends, and don’t scoff.
    Scoffing will just make it worse.
I’ve heard the orders issued for destruction, orders from
    God-of-the-Angel-Armies—ending up in an international disaster.

The culture often tells us that the way to build your life is to be on top. We are winners meant to conquer the world. So we do the right things, build a foundation on hard work and purpose, and everything will be alright. But in reality – is this really how we should make sense of our lives?

Foundations are fundamental. With weak foundations, everything we have built in this life can crumble anytime. The pandemic this past year showed us that. So many people lost relationships, loved ones, finances, businesses, and the goals they had become useless.

Isaiah 28 describes the mighty Samarai who built their foundations on what seems like solid ground, yet the Lord warned them not to trust in their manufactured foundations.

Isaiah gave them an alternative that I hope you could also think about. He told them to build their life’s foundation on the Lord. He compares the foundations of the world to weak walls that hailstorms could destroy.

Build, build, build but before you do, check your foundation. In the past year, 2021, everybody was hype on Bitcoins and crypto investing, and it came crashing down. It was said to be the next biggest thing to make you rich, yet it ended up making many people broke.

Before the pandemic hit, many were making grand plans for their success and almost came to a screeching halt when Covid hit us globally.

I am writing all this for us to consider rethinking where we build our foundations. Every minute of our life counts – we might as well build strong and correct.