Excavation...

At work the other day, I was operating a plate compactor on a patch of ground where we were about to pour a concrete slab. I found myself reminiscing about the time back in my late teens when I worked for a concrete company for a few months. We mostly worked on foundations, slabs, basement walls, and sidewalks. It wasn't my favorite way to earn a dollar, but the experience has served me well on many occasions through the years. It also taught me how to run a plate compactor pretty well since I had to run one A LOT being the low man on the totem pole.

If you don't know what a plate compactor is, think of the heaviest push mower you can imagine, double the weight, and then get rid of the wheels. As indicated by the name, there's a heavy steel plate on the bottom of the contraption and the idea is that you're supposed to hang on to the handle so it doesn't get away from you while it vibrates itself along the ground, and compacts whatever lies in its path. It's a good time.

Compacting before pouring concrete is a big deal because you don't want to pour concrete on soft ground. If you do, that soft ground will eventually compact under the weight of the concrete and then the concrete will settle and eventually crack. The absolute ideal would be to dig down to bedrock and pour the concrete right onto that. If you can't go that deep, you want to at least get down to undisturbed soil, build it up with gravel and then compact that gravel. That's where the plate compactor comes in.

If you didn't already know, foundations are a lot of work.

Almost every time I find myself working on a foundation, I'm reminded of a song I used to hear as a kid: "don't build your house on the sandy land, don't build it too near the shore..." I still think it has a catchy tune and a moderately worthwhile message, but it's actually a bit misleading. The concept of the song comes from a story Jesus told in the Bible about "the wise and foolish builders", and it's recorded in 2 different places: Matthew 7:24-27, and Luke 6:46-49

The passage from Matthew 7 could imply that there are two separate locations for building the house (which is how the song portrays it), but in Luke 6 the wording clearly indicates that it's more an issue of preparing the ground:

47 As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like. 48 They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49 But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

To me that sounds a lot like digging out the soft, unstable ground, in order to build on something solid. If you've already been building your life on a corrupt world view or shaky values and priorities, there's going to be some digging that needs to take place in order to build your life of Jesus.

It's a bad idea to pour concrete on soft ground, but it's a really bad idea to pour concrete over garbage.

What thought processes and attitudes are you building your life on?