The Wall That Rose in Millbrook

In 2019, a tornado carved a quarter-mile scar through Millbrook, Alabama, peeling roofs off homes and snapping a century-old oak across the entrance of Millbrook Baptist Church. Insurance adjusters arrived with clipboards and long timelines. But before the paperwork cleared, something else happened. Carl Jessup, a seventy-two-year-old retired mason, showed up at dawn with his trowel and a wheelbarrow of mortar. By seven that morning, three teenagers from the youth group had joined him, hauling cinder blocks from a donated pallet. By noon, a dozen families were working shoulder to shoulder — teachers, mechanics, a woman still wearing her hospital scrubs from the night shift. Nobody assigned tasks. Nobody waited for permission. They simply had a mind to work.

Within six days, the church entrance stood again. Not because one hero carried the load, but because ordinary people decided together that the rubble would not have the final word.

Nehemiah tells us the wall of Jerusalem reached half its height not through one foreman's brilliance but because the people had a mind to work. The Hebrew phrase — lev la'am la'asot — suggests their hearts were knit to the task. God does not wait for perfect conditions or extraordinary talent. He looks for willing hands and unified hearts. When a whole community leans in together, walls rise faster than the enemy ever expected.