How to Build a Pyramid

I have never been to Egypt, but every photograph that I have seen of the Pyramids at Giza covey the size and nature of these impressive mausoleums. Someone has defined a mausoleum as “the final and funniest folly of

the rich.” Without much fear of contradiction we can assume that the grandest mausoleum of them all is the Great Pyramid, built  4,600 years ago by the Egyptian ruler Cheops, also known as Khufu, at the edge of the desert just outside Cairo.

Final? The Great Pyramid was intended to be Cheops’ eternal monument, although it has never been established that the pharaoh’s body actually rested within.

Funniest folly? Well, I guess that depends upon one’s point of view…. Probably the slaves and workers used in the construction saw nothing funny in their endless labors.

Rich? Cheops had few worries on that score. His pyramid--some 480 feet high (145.75 meters) originally, and measuring 750 feet (229 meters) along in the base--is so large it monopolized the labors of 30,000 workers for at least 20 years. It is a massive structure… The area covered by the Great pyramid can accommodate St Peter’s in Rome, the cathedrals of Florence and Milan, as well as Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral in London. It is thirty times larger than the Empire State Building in New York. The Great Pyramid is the oldest and only surviving “wonder” of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

Pyramid builders are a little thin on the ground these days…. But then the several billion dollar price tag is a wee bit of a deterrent, and obtaining the planning consent would be a killer. The “science” of Pyramidology has fallen out of favor as a “new age” cure-all, and as the much-vaunted declarations of pyramid-power --“energies unknown to science”-- have failed to live up to the claims of being the fuel for everything, pyramids today are basically discarded (but impressive) relics from a very distant past.

There is no future in building monuments to the past, yet many of us do just that! Many of us want to stay in the past, because then we don’t have to deal with the pain of the present. We want to remember relationships before they were broken. We try to remember what it was like before the loss of a loved one. We remember when things were footloose and fancy-free, but now the money is tight and the bills are due.

Sometimes we lie awake at night, thinking, dreaming, and wishing of days that have gone by— the “good old days”. And we so desperately desire to go back to them and relive them.

Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall sprout; shall you not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19

God spoke those words to His people more than 2,500 years ago, and God is speaking the same words to us today. To the person who has “blown it”, made more mistakes than they can count: forget the past. God gives each of us a fresh beginning every day.

To the person who longs for the good old days—forget them…they are history…God is doing a new thing in your life. To the one who is lonely, forget those thoughts—God is along-side of you at this very moment.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. John 15:15

We may be overwhelmed because of what has happened in the past and unsure of what the future holds… but God’s Word tells us not to dwell on the past, nor fear the future. God is doing something great in each of our lives… something new, something unexpected.

From God's Word:
My brothers, I do not count myself to have taken possession, but one thing I do, forgetting the things behind and reaching forward to the things before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:13-14