Scaffold or palace?

Last week my lovely pastor, Jan Bros, passed on a resource to me of a talk that Tony Campolo recently gave at North Park University in Chicago, IL. Tony challenged his listeners to use this economic crisis to re-evaluate where they are investing their lives: in the falling powers of this earth, or the eternal Kingdom of God.

Then today, in my lectio reading, I came across these words of George MacDonald's. It struck me that George gives a picture of what those investments look like, eternally. Here are George's words, exerpted from The Vicar's Daughter:

Suppose God were building a palace for you, and had set up a scaffold, upon which he wanted you to help him; would it be resaonable in you to complain that you didn't find the scaffold at all a comfortable place to live in? that it was drafty and cold? This world is that scaffold; and if you were busy carrying stones and mortar for the palace, you would be glad of all the cold to cool the glow of your labor. (...)But what will all the labor of a workman come to if he does not fall in line with the design of the builder? (...) ...will you go on tacking bits of matting and old carpet about the corners of the scaffold to keep the wind off, while that same wind keeps tearing them away and scattering them?

Primed from listening to Tony's speech last week and meditating all weekend on where the investment of my (and my family and church's) life lies; this image of George's fell on extremely fertile ground in my heart. I hope and pray that I will become sensitive to realize when I am 'tacking bits of matting and old carpet' around me and will stop immediately and begin again the work of building the palace with my Father. This, for me, is the desire of my life... to work along side Him until I realize we are done.

As I finish, I cannot help but ask, "where do your investments lie?"