Hi Folks:

Our youngest boy, Mark, loves expensive, sleek sports cars, particularly the Ford Mustang and anything by Ferrari. As a late birthday gift, he received a model Ferrari F430 to build out of Lego. Its really quite an impressive thing, certainly not the Lego I played with as a child.

It wasn't easy to put together. With 690 pieces and more than 50 pages of coloured pictures to follow, wasn't hard to mess it up. And, of course, if an early stage is wrong, later pieces wouldn't fit properly. By about page 42, Mark was thoroughly frustrated and fed up. The front wouldn't stay connected. The detailed engine didn't fit properly. The rear fenders kept falling off.

"Mark," I tried to say with some tack and diplomacy, "I think you may have missed something."

"No, I've followed everything. The stupid instructions are wrong. They're always wrong."

"Well, Mark, I've found that the instructions in Lego are usually pretty good." (I have my own Technic Lego sets.)

"I followed everything just like they said."

"Let me take a look."

"No, I want to finish it."

"But, Mark, I don't think its right. Let me take a look."

You're getting the condensed version of the story. It was a fairly drawn-out conversation as I tried to convince him I might be able to help.

Finally he let me pick it up. As I checked it over, the front, back, and fenders all fell off. Mark's face dropped. The remnants of his Lego dream lay in shambles and he thought I was responsible. This was definitely one of those tough moments to be a father.

I convinced him to let me take it apart and start over. He watched, sniffling, as I took it apart and started over. In about 10 minutes he was amazed that I had progressed so quickly. "It took me a lot longer to get that far," he said. "I didn't know you were so good at it."

And then, during one of the steps, I found where he had gone wrong. When I asked him about it, he replied, "Oh that. We couldn't find the right piece and so we had to put in a different one."

After the model was about half-built, I had to go out. When I returned Mark met me at the door holding up the completed model. He was all smiles, proud and satisfied.

Life goes a lot better when we let God do the building. Often its only when we're frustrated and empty that we finally let it go. Often we blame God for the mess. But when we let Him take it and build our lives it the way He designed it, the results turn out so much better than we could have done.

Often we think we understand His will and we run ahead, skipping steps along the way. Then we get surprised that things aren't going as we planned. When we back up, let God take apart what we did wrong, and put us back together, things go more smoothly.

Not that life is always easy after that. But better than if we do try to do it our way.

Ephesians 3:20-21 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.*

Hope this helps. Be OnFire.

Troy

April 23, 2007

*All Bible references to from New International Version. To subscribe, email onfireletter-subscribe@topica.com. Missed some OnFire letters? View the archives at http://lists.topica.com/lists/onfireletter/read and www.onfireletter.com.