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November 04, 2005
Allegories , Faith : Life, assembly required
Consider a man who buys his young son an unassembled bicycle, with the hope that the two of them would be able to have some nice father-son bonding time in the process of building the bicycle (perhaps the man had fond memories of similar time spent with his own father). Let's say that the man is actually quite skilled mechanically, and was looking forward to passing some of his experience on to his son.
However, when the day comes, the man's son isn't interested in his father's help or even company (and not because of anything the father has done). The son is proud and willful and wants to build the bicycle completely on his own. The father watches, and tries to help - pointing out that the washers need to be put on before the nut, or offering to tighten the bold on the handlebar which the son was not strong enough to do; but the son ignores him.
In the end, the experience is doubly disappointing for the father. Not only has the opportunity to spend time bonding with his son been lost; but the result is that his son's bicycle is at best nonfunctional and at worst apparently functional but unsafe to actually ride.
If you can imagine how the man would feel under such circumstance, I think that is how God often feels about us.
God gave each of us an "unassembled life" kit, and I believe he was looking forward for the chance to spend time with us helping us assemble our kit. As the creator of the kit, he certainly knows how to assemble it so the result provides both maximum performance and maximum safety.
Yet most of us, most of the time, choose to assemble the kit ourselves, ignoring God's desire to help us. In this we loose doubly - we both end up with a less than ideally constructed life and we miss out on the chance to spend time with God as we are building it.
Note, in my story I did not have the man hire a mechanic to help his son build the bicycle - the message here is about relationship. I appreciate those who are apprehensive about taking someone else's word about what God intends, and I believe God feels the same way. As in the story, I believe he wants to develop a relationship with each of us personally where he can work with us on constructing our live, not have someone else work with us.
Posted by Steven at November 4, 2005 05:00 PM
