On Sunday, our church mission team gave a report on the week of home repair work they did a few weeks ago. There were pictures of the men, women, and teens sawing, hammering, scraping, painting, and digging. They interacted with the people in the neighborhood and even served a free lunch on the last day. So for a week, some folks in our community got to see Christian people demonstrate the love of Christ by working and sweating while fixing up the homes.

I was recovering from COVID that week, and even though I had not planned to work on the project, I had a twinge of desire to participate. And when they showed the photos, I experienced a flood of nostalgia for all the times the hammer was in my hand for the sake of Christ.

My first call to service was in 1985, when our church sent a group of high school kids (my daughter included) to Matewan, West Virginia for a week of home repair work under the auspices of the Appalachia Service Project. I remember feeling inadequate when faced with the deplorable condition of the homes we were to work on. But, by the end of the week we’d made some new friends among the shy and soft-spoken people who lived in the hills and “hollers”. We left their homes a little “warmer, safer, and drier” than before. For six successive summers I helped lead teams of teens in various counties of rural Appalachia.

Years later, in a different church, I became part of an adult home repair team that worked in one area of eastern Kentucky for a week for several summers. The dynamic was different, more skills, less energy, but the mission was the same, make a deplorable home a little better for those who lived there. Again, friendships formed, and the gospel was shared with hammers and saws.

Some things never changed. Loading building materials into vans and pickups, tearing down old porches, or tearing out old walls; installing decks, stairs, insulation, plumbing, wiring, and drywall; sweating, drinking quarts of Gatorade, fighting off hornets and wasps, tending to cuts, scrapes and insect bites; and the quiet satisfaction of having done SOMETHING even if it was not near enough.

Some said they did it because the need was so great, others said it made them feel good. Some teens said it was great to get away from home, others said it made them feel useful for the first time in their lives. But many of us served because of a command:

James 2:14-17 (ESV) What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Maybe next summer I’ll get to wield a hammer or a broom in Christ’s name. If not, I will surely pray for those that do.