God, Legos and Santa Claus
On Christmas Eve, my granddaughters placed the cookies and milk by the fireplace with their traditional note for Santa. But this one was a little different . . .
“My sister and I would like you to put these Legos together for us.”
Nearby was this basket FULL of Legos. If Santa can make, wrap and distribute toys to 2 billion kids on 7 continents in 8 hours, rebuilding a few Legos in a couple of seconds should be light duty.
When I look at that pile of pieces, I think about the pictures on the boxes they came in. Each toys’ original design when perfectly assembled. I remember how they looked when they were actually first put together. But then I remember how life happened. I remember how the toys got busted up in the imaginary war. How the ‘pretend’ disasters tore them apart. Broke them into little pieces that don’t look anything like the picture on the box.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could ask Santa to put our lives back together? If he could put his finger to his nose and undo the consequences of 30 years of smoking, dishonesty, selfishness, marital infidelity, addiction to alcohol, porn or prescription drugs, of the verbal abuse we’ve rendered to our wives, or the years of neglect of our kids while worshipping our careers?
Even Jesus . . . even the Gospel doesn’t do that. Being ‘saved’, forgiven, trusting Christ and receiving His grace still leaves us in the middle of the pile of busted-up Legos. We’re haunted by the memories . . . the pictures on the boxes . . . how great it was going to be. “God, please put these pieces back together for me,” we pray. But it’s not happening, at least not that way. Not usually. You can’t talk your way out of what you behaved yourself into. You have to behave your way out.
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” says Galatians 6:7.
We don’t live in Lego Land or Fantasyland or any other dream world. We live in the real world God created. A world with systems and a natural order. A world where we are given free will to choose for ourselves but where every choice has a consequence. Bad choices (i.e. sowing bad seeds) bring bad consequences. Even after surrendering to Jesus, we may continue to ‘reap’ the consequences of the bad seeds we already sowed. We start making good choices (sowing good seeds) with good consequences and over time, we get rebuilt. We ‘sowed’ and ‘reaped’ ourselves into the broken pile of Legos. We ‘sow’ and ‘reap’ our way out of the pile and back together.
The rebuilt Lego toys are almost never exactly like the originals. There’s a few pieces lost and gone forever. A few pieces ripped from other toys. But the new things created are interesting and beautiful. The Creator smiles as He participates in the rebuilding process, loving every minute He’s invited in.
A wonderful piece of news. The picture on the Lego box that shows us what it looks like when it’s finished? Jesus. He’s what we look like complete. Live like Jesus and over time, we’ll be in the image of Jesus. Sow ‘Jesus-seeds’ of humility and kindness and we’ll start to be like Him. He’s the model we shape ourselves like. The Bible is our instruction book. It’ll tell us what pieces to include and which to leave out, especially the bad pieces that were never in His box.
Question: Do you want to be built into someone beautiful this year? Someone like Jesus? Ask Him which pieces belong and which need to be left out. Start sowing all good seeds. Tell us about it here.
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