Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Cracking the Building Code





Looking back, the pieces finally started clicking together when our son got his first LEGO® building set – Star Wars The Clone Wars. Of course, at the time, I had no idea...

The sealed cardboard box perfectly epitomized my approach to just about anything creative - cooking and gardening, parenting and disciple-making.

On the outside, there was a high-definition picture – in fact, several pictures - of what I should expect the end result to look like.  Just seeing them made my fingers itch to get this building business under way. 

Look at those slick lines! Check out these cool features! 

The spattering of few odd-looking characters made the process all the more interesting.

Inside, I could find a booklet with clear, step by step, easy to follow instructions and several bags of well-organized pieces. Everything I need to build the pictured model was in that one box.

My job was to open the box, get my pieces together, read the manual, follow the instructions, and in no time, without fail - voila, there comes a model disciple!

It turns out, real life rarely works quite that way. 

Except, perhaps, for those odd-looking characters.

Sure, there is the instruction manual.

Except, the instructions are not as simple, easy to understand and follow.

And sure, there are the building blocks. 

But, not all of them are ‘fresh-out-of-the-box’ nice and shiny.  In fact, hardly any of them are!  Most pieces in my pile are scuffed up and old, chipped and even broken. They all seem to have a mind of their own, refusing to stay put together the way I want them. They go off on their own in a million directions, lurking under the desk or embedded in the carpet, waiting for my unsuspecting bare feet to find them. 

Ouch!

And so my nice little set gets morphed into a big messy pile in the middle of the bedroom, the content of dozens of different boxes all hopelessly mixed together.

I can’t make any sense of that mess! 

There are days when I scratch my head for I am not sure if I am supposed to build an Imperial Starfighter or the Little House on the Prairie.

Or, perhaps, I should just bag the whole thing and go back to Duplos®!

Seated next to the big messy pile, nursing a massive headache, I do know one thing for sure.

I can’t do this on my own.  I desperately need help.   

I must call on the Master Builder!

It turns out, the Master Builder loves to answer. It is His joy to come alongside and help all the flailing junior builders in over their heads.

He always knows exactly where to start. He picks up a piece. He holds it up so I can see it clearly, and says,

This... this piece is the key. It’s the Cornerstone. Whenever you build, whatever you build, make sure you always start with the Cornerstone. 

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