"Masterpieces"

I love analogies. Like, it's weird how much I love analogies. So here's my analogy for today:

Reading the Bible is like putting on lotion. (Stifle your laughter, please.) It's easy to forget about lotion until our skin is dry. Then we put on lotion and feel better. But if we don't keep putting on lotion, our skin is going to continue to stay dry.

It's easy for us to forget about reading the Bible until life gets hard. Life gets hard and we google Bible verses about the trial we're going through, read a passage on it, and feel better. But if we don't keep reading the Bible, that trial is still continue to be a challenge. Even better, if we read our Bible when we're not being challenged (or put on lotion when our skin isn't dry), we'll be prepared for the challenge and it'll be easier.

Judge me for my analogy if you want, but Jesus used analogies, and he's the ultimate judge.

On a more serious note, my quiet time today took me to Exodus 27-29. Can I just say, Exodus isn't always the most thrilling book in the Bible. Sure, there are exciting times when the Israelites are rescued from Egypt. And when the Ten Commandments are presented. Or even when baby Moses was rescued from the Nile. But Exodus 25-30 are chapters that provide the Israelites with instructions on how to build the ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, the alter where sacrifices are to be made, and the garments that priests are to wear. Reading these chapters can be like staring at a wall sometimes. It can be so easy for us to skip these chapters and say to ourselves, "This was for the Israelites. There's not much I can learn because I'm not going to build these things. God wants me to learn, so I'll read something that teaches me or encourages me." This is called rationalizing. My accounting teacher used to tell us, "You can rationalize just about anything if you want to." You can rationalize your way out of reading the "boring" scriptures, but they're still a part of God's word. And you can still learn.

Let me tell you what I learned from these "boring" passages. I learned that God had an intricately detailed plan for objects. The tabernacle was, at the end of the day, an object. It had no soul. The alter, an object. Garments - objects. They were important, yes, but they did not need salvation. How much more, then, does God plan our lives? If he has such detailed plans for things, how much more detailed is His plan for us? And then I got to thinking - these "boring" passages were instructions. And if the Israelites did not follow the instructions, the things wouldn't work. If they made a side of the tent too short, that wouldn't be a good tent. If they made the ark and forgot to include the rings for the poles so they could carry it, there would be a lot of dead Israelites. The same is true for us. If we don't follow God's will for our lives, we won't function to our fullest ability. We'll be lopsided - missing something. If we don't follow God's plan for us, sometimes He has to tear down what we did so we can start again. To us - it's destruction. We created this "beautiful" thing that we think is what He wants and when He tears it down we gawk in disbelief. But we created a garment with holes in it - and that won't work.

If God has torn down your "masterpiece", realize it's for a reason. It's to build something better. Don't be discouraged. Don't think He's forgotten you. Trust Him, trust His plan. After all, He had a plan for a tent - and that ended up being a pretty important thing.