My hubby loves carpentry and woodworking. He says he's not good at it; however, he loves the smell of sawdust and the feeling of thinking something up in his own mind and seeing it come into being.
Uniformity is important in working with wood. Symmetry. Sameness. The photo to the right is of something called a "jig" - which allows the carpenter to make cut after cut the exact same way with a table saw. Over and over and over. To me, whose art is more verbal and musical than that, that's boring. But... it's necessary to have structure, even in writing and music!!
I find it intriguing that the God of the universe, who is One of endless variety, would choose to be born into a family where the dad was a carpenter. He understands from experience that the framework has to be the same. The foundation has to be solid, the framing square. There is a certain order. After that, creativity can be expressed and variety takes over.
Even a cursory study of the scriptures shows us that God doesn't like to be pegged. Never, ever does He EVER do something the same way twice. I suspect that this is so that we don't think we can figure Him out and predict what He's going to do, so that we don't get cocky.
Nature itself bears witness to His imagination and the joy He takes in creating masterpiece after masterpiece, no two alike.
Sunsets, cloud formations, all kinds of animals. The same concept applies. The same raw materials for the sunsets, the same basic skeletal structure for the animals. But there the similarity ends. God seems to take delight in doing the unexpected.
So what makes us think that we can reduce His working down to a prescribed formula? "A plus B equals C. Believe this, do that, and God is obliged to deposit this desired outcome into your lap." Vending-machine thinking! The ones who have it all worked out to this nice, seven-steps-to-prosperity thinking have tried (and failed, might I add) to put God in a box. They somehow don't seem to realize that it's all a sham, that there is so much more to God than Him being a celestial Santa Claus who hands out rewards for being good. They've tried to put a "jig" on God.
Well, the jig is up. Although His workings might follow a very vague pattern, there is no predicting what God will do, or what He'll use to accomplish what He wants. He might even use things we never would have imagined - such as suffering that we brought on ourselves, even - to work out in us what He wants. All of it is designed to get us to the point where we realize that without Him, we can do nothing in and of ourselves; we can't even believe in Him - even faith is a gift of undeserved favor from Him! And then we ask - humbly, not demanding - for Him to live through us. To grant His power to do what we have tried, over and over again, to do ... and failed miserably.
At that point, when we admit that we are powerless over the fatal flaws in ourselves and in others, and ask Him to take over, that is when He breathes a sigh of relief and starts creating another masterpiece - from the inside out.
I don't usually give a second thought to birds in flight - until I see one that can't fly but which is supposed to be able to fly.
I remember a song I wrote when I was a teenager. I'd been to a wildlife park and had seen an eagle there. It bothered me so much to see such a magnificent bird dragging its feathers in the dust, hopping from foot to foot, looking miserable.
Anyway, the song was about an eagle who had been captured, tethered to the ground amid the dust, and made to live a lower life to satisfy the curiosity of its captors. He looks up to the skies and sees a sparrow, flitting from bush to bush outside his enclosure.
Part of the lyrics went like this:
I know that I, an eagle, was more majestic than he
But now he owns more power, simply because he is free.
Was I sixteen when I wrote that?? Wow.... But I digress.
He was powerless to free himself. But someone who had enough money to buy him, could come in at any time and loose the bonds. (When that happens with a slave, they call it redemption). Then it would be the eagle's choice whether to stay, still considering himself to be tied to the ground, or move past those fears, let go of his previous mindset, and leap into the sky.
So with us. Jesus has freed us, but many of us are still hopping around on the ground, believing in the limitations to which we've become accustomed.
There is such liberty in letting go.
We let go of our old way of thinking, of thinking that we can fix people, control them, manipulate them, rescue them. We let God rescue them - that is His job, after all. He's the One who does it best. And we just concentrate on our own spiritual journey, our own relationship with Him.
We let go of the lies we were fed all our lives, and we embrace His truth: He loves us, He accepts us just as we are, He wants the best for us (that's HIM), and He will never give up on us. He considers us worth knowing. He gave everything to make sure we had that opportunity!!
With His empowerment,
- We let go of the self-doubt those lies led us to.
- We let go of the guilt for past deeds - He died to take that away if we would just give it to Him.
- We let go of the shame we feel for being ourselves, and we begin to see ourselves as He sees us.
- We let go of the resentments we have harbored against those who have kept us in bondage. Those resentments themselves have kept us bound even more than our oppressors did.
We look only to Him, and let Him look deeply into us with an unconditional love like we've never known or ever will know. In that love-relationship, as we let go of the things that tie us to our old selves, we find the very thing we have longed for all our lives.
Joy.
