The Great Pyramids

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:10-15, ESV). Thirty years ago an international panel overseeing the restoration of the Great Pyramids in Egypt overcame years of frustration when it abandoned modern construction techniques in favor of the method employed by the ancient Egyptians. Located at Giza outside Cairo, some of the oldest manmade structures on earth were showing severe signs of decay by the early 1980s. Successful repair work began on the 4,600-year-old Sphinx in 1981, but restoration of the pyramids proved destructive when water in modern cement caused adjacent limestone stones to split. On January 12, 1984, restorers stopped using mortar and adopted the system of interlocking blocks practiced by the original pyramid builders. From thereon, the project proceeded smoothly. King Khufu, his son, and his grandson in the Fourth Dynasty, built the three enormous pyramids situated at Giza outside of Cairo. The largest, known as the Great Pyramid, was built by Khufu and is the only one of the "Seven Wonders of the World" from antiquity that still survives. The largest single building ever erected on the planet, the Great Pyramid was built of approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone and stood nearly 50 stories high upon completion. Its base forms a nearly perfect and level square, with sides aligned to the four cardinal points of the compass. The Great Pyramid is composed primarily of yellowish limestone blocks and was originally covered in an outer casing of smooth light-colored limestone. This finer limestone eroded and was carried away in later centuries, but the material can still be found in the inner passages. The interior burial chamber was built of huge blocks of granite. It is believed that construction of the pyramid took 20 years and involved over 20,000 workers, bakers, carpenters, and water carriers. The exact method in which this architectural masterpiece was built is not definitively known, but the leading theory is that the Egyptians employed an encircling embankment of sand, brick, and earth that was increased in height as the pyramid rose. Our reading this morning compares our lives to construction. When we use good materials and sound techniques in construction, the building lasts. The same is true in our lives. If we are incorporating good things in our lives through our experiences and activities, we can expect results that will stand the test of time. What kind of things do you “build” with in your life?