The Good News ~ August 8, 2024
Putting It Together
Once upon a time, humans bought furniture at a store. They loaded the furniture into a truck or a van, perhaps even the back seat of the car. Upon arrival at home, the furniture was placed in the house somewhere. Done.
These days FedEx drops two or three heavy cardboard boxes on your driveway. The driver leaves like a Summer Santa Claus…
With a knowing, smirk of a smile,
He’s waving goodbye,
As if to say,
“Merry assembly to all and to all
A heck of a frustrating night.”
On Monday, I unpacked more than a dozen wicker panels from two heavy cardboard boxes stacked in my driveway. These panels needed to be put together with about 100 bolts. The bolts were vacuum packed onto cardboard, and all looked the same—except there were three different lengths. All the chair panels looked the same, but hidden holes in the wicker needed to be found to differentiate them. The friendly furniture engineers included a disposable, ill-fitting hex key and a flat, weak bolt wrench. Okay, where are the instructions?
Hidden in the wicker folds of a panel I found the instructions. The instructions were in picture form. They were kind of like an adult version of Lego building instructions, but not at all fun. Walking barefoot on Legos would be more fun.
The instruction printing was terrible. I couldn’t make out the step-by-step pictures well. The exact panel and bolts needed for each step was an educated guessing game. To make my adventure interesting, the panels and bolts were not labeled. For example, step 1 calls for bolt size A3 to join together panels D1 and D2. I’m looking at a salad of bolts in front of me and nothing indicates which ones are A3 or A1 or A2. Furthermore, none of the panels has a label. I try to interpret which panel they call for in the steps, and ALL THE PANELS LOOK THE SAME! If I attach the wrong panel, I get to redo all my work…which I did a few times.
I finished with aching fingers, bruised hands, and a few new donations to the cuss jar. The set looks great! Come over and see it sometime.
The instructions may have worked better if someone took the time to clearly write and print the steps. The assembly would have been easier if the panels and hardware were labeled. There would be no guesswork. All would work together smoothly.
I find this project to be a little bit like our Christian faith. Christians have instructions for life (the Bible), but parts of our life don’t seem to match. We hold the Bible to be the cornerstone of our faith, but sometimes we find that scripture is fuzzy on things we encounter. The step-by-step instructions of scripture don’t seem to connect with our lives in a clear way. After all, the Bible is from a place and a time far away from us. In our frustration, we may just put the Bible on the shelf or, worse, we may just give up on God’s words for our lives.
Disciple Fast Track Bible study can help. I’ll be leading an in-depth,12-week journey through the Old Testament this Fall to help us understand where the Bible fits within our modern lives. If you feel like you don’t know much about scripture, this class is for you. If you’ve been a lifelong Bible scholar, this class is for you. Fast Track will help us read and understand the basic stories of scripture and help us apply their principles to our modern lives. I think you’ll really enjoy this study.
So join us this Fall to put the pieces of our lives back together with the God’s instruction book.
Peace,
