From Ashes to Walls—Build a Gate Please

From Ashes to Walls—Build a Gate Please

-Dr. Sylvan A. Lashley

Happy Sabbath morn!
No pale of dark ash hangs in the valley now for the walls of the auditorium have symbolically begun to rise. First from framed steel structures, to the freshly cast-floor with its 'last-Thursday-all-night-poured' concrete. With trucks lined up all along the Maracas road, arriving and departing like orderly foot soldiers in tight precision, men scurrying and hurrying, bright lights and impressive machinery, cement pole high, pouring continuously, under ultra-bright lights, piercing the quietness of the otherwise serene valley, I stood on my vantage-point verandah, from my home on the rising southern knoll, and proudly watched history in the pouring.


My parents, and siblings, all CUC-ians of yore would have been justly proud, and you should be too, as it’s not often a person gets to see buildings rise out of the earth like legacies awakening from slumber. Then it flashed across my peripheral mental vision—every institution has its ashes and its fallen walls. It is not the ash that matters, but what we do about it that counts. So let’s build walls and construct gates.


My mind wandered back into biblical history—there were ashes too in Judah, after a fire much like the one that razed our auditorium a few years ago, leaving a charred skeleton of memories. Fires have that devastating and awesome power, but the opportunity to re-birth and re-group follows. Ashes sprinkled when the conquering forces of heathen nations led the children of Israel and of Judah into captivity, and ashes scattered when the temple burnt. The people of God, seemingly humbled and ashamed, continue apace, yet always with a ray of hope.


Nehemiah was troubled—things looked bleak back in Judah—the temple laid in ruin and ashes—broken walls. Stocked with provisions and letters that secured his good passage, he set out, across the country, away from his comfortable cup-bearing job and fine wines, almost like Abraham, into the unknown (Nehemiah 2). Rebuilding the wall, that symbolic structure of hope, respect and pride, was not without challenge. A solo nocturnal survey of the problem at hand revealed the enormity of the task. He soliloquized, defined and described the problem, collected the facts, displayed concern and confessed publicly, before committing to the task ahead; a cocktail of mixed courage and caution. Sanballat and Tobiah, and later Geshem and Shemaiah (the wolf-prophet in sheep’s clothing), gloated over his effort to rebuild, goading him on relentlessly, and encouraging him to talk the problem out, a feinted hint of violence in the conversation, for there are those who are wont to do violence with the veiled glove. Nehemiah marshals groups after countering the false letters of those who would have him stop the business of rebuilding (Nehemiah 4). Even when Geshem attempted to confuse with his subterfuge, Nehemiah refused to be deterred. Nehemiah had established a relationship with all the people, a necessary step to rebuilding, and assigned them to various tasks nearest at hand to their houses, calling forth for both personal and professional commitment. He was wise to both "watch and pray”. While some worked, some watched, armed, so that if a need arose at one part of the wall, resources could be shifted to that portion—impressive strategic thinking and action, deploying the resources where they were most needed. In the midst of the rebuilding process, Nehemiah paused to help the poor and those oppressed by the rabbis and the nobles who were charging high interest—“now, you are selling your own people…what you are doing is not right…let us stop charging interest…” He never demanded the resources allotted to him as governor, for at that time the people had a dire need which was more important than his recompense.


I have pondered deeply on these things—am I, in the rebuilding of the University doing all that I can? Am I taking more than I give and by so doing oppressing someone somewhere? We too, in our lives will find that we have ashes at times, but we too can move from ashes to walls on many of these matters, and God gives us the strength to rebuild the walls, and keep them in top shape.


The University of the Southern Caribbean has witnessed auditorium ashes, the double retrenchment ashes, smaller allowances and debt ashes. Yet it has also seen God’s marvelous blessings in a resurgent plan and action to rebuild the debt-credit wall, the physical plant wall, the student development wall, the spiritual church wall, the academic wall, and the accountability wall, for as Nehemiah rebuilt the ten Gates, starting with the Sheep Gate, constructed by the priests, then the Fish Gate, the Valley Gate, etc., so are we called now to build Gates in strategic places. Each of us has seen ashes, and rebuilt walls and gates. May God bless and strengthen us this day, in our service to Him, and to the rebuilt walls. We will look beyond GATE, and beyond the hills, for our help, in essence, comes from the Lord.