Recently in my neighbourhood there has been much talk regarding older, rundown buildings in the city where I live and their replacement - for good or for bad.  I don’t often enter into the conversations regarding these older buildings for lots of reasons.  First of all, emotions are running high on both sides of the conversation and also, there are lots of politics tied in to it all.  I leave the political conversations for my wife to handle as she’s the news savvy member of our household.  My conversation portfolio revolves around other issues, like consumption of cheese and why dogs are better pets than cats - you know, important stuff…

That being said, it would be inaccurate to say that I haven’t spent some time thinking about about the issue and even forming my own opinion regarding it.  Here is where I hesitate; my opinion could be wrong and I’m not even that interested in debating it with others - but where I have landed on this isolated situation has provoked in me some spiritual thoughts.  Not that the situation is itself spiritual, but rather it has (for me anyway) served as a concrete illustration about a trait that I see in human nature - and specifically a trait I see in me.  It has simply been a springboard; a real-life situation that made me think of something completely unrelated.  Call it a parable.  I can’t stress this enough because it can be so easy to jump into the debate over the value of keeping older buildings (of which there is much) or not, and I don’t wish for us to do that here - plenty of other forums for that.  So, if you know what I’m referring to and have strong feelings one way or another, I challenge you to show restraint and not debate it here.  If you have to send me a Facebook message to get something off your chest, feel free.  My response will likely be: “Tell my wife - I need to go eat cheese.”

I find myself with a unique perspective on this whole issue, as I work in a downtown church near where all of this hubbub is happening.  What is unique is that the church I work in has been designated as a Heritage Building - a designation which some people were lobbying to give to these buildings that are being taken down.  I love the idea of Heritage Buildings (I went to a Pioneer Village with my whole family during Father’s Day and marvelled at where we have come as a people) but I would never want to have ownership of one again.  We are in the process of selling our building - partly because of the cost of maintaining such an old structure (and the limitations of what we are allowed to do to the building) is just too much - especially since there is no financial assistance.  We like the look of an old building but nobody wants to foot the bill of maintaining it.

So I sympathize with those who desired to see our downtown core preserved (I understand the value of history) but at the same time I sympathize with the other side.  As long as I can remember (and I’m an old dude) these old, rundown buildings have been an eyesore on our downtown core.  Historical value yes, but certainly nothing to be proud of, as many have sat vacant and condemned for a long time with nobody doing much to correct their state.  And I guess that’s what puzzles me the most - where were these voices 15-20 years ago, crying for them to be fixed and not removed?  Maybe there were there and I didn’t know of them.

Here is the spiritual thought that has struck me over the past couple weeks as this has all unfolded:  how much of the broken, rundown sections of my soul have I neglected to clean up and restore?  And as I strive to follow after Jesus and He asks me to let go of the things of my past - because they are broken and rundown - how loudly do I protest?  Do I argue that they are just part of my identity?  That they should be allowed to be preserved because I have historical and emotional attachment to them?  They give me “character”?

I could have easily gone a different direction with this - the idea that Jesus is the one who restores the broken and condemned and makes it better.  Even though this is true, part of following Jesus is about pursuing holiness, and that pursuit requires that I let go of certain parts of who I am and what I do in the process of sanctification.  It’s not easy to do - as people we find loopholes and excuses to hang onto all sorts of our sinfulness.  How beautiful it is that Jesus is calling us to something higher; to something more.  How amazing that He is making us something new and better than we were in our broken, sinful state.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I’m not saying there wasn’t and isn’t a place to cry out for the preservation of older, historical buildings in our communities.  There probably is.  But in our lives, as we claim to pursue Jesus, let that pursuit be our priority even when it means letting go our our past and our sinfulness.  May our lives be characterized by these words of the apostle Paul:

“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13, 14)