The Lord speaks in mysterious ways...
About a week ago, I fell asleep praying about what I should get my roomie for Christmas. That night, I dreamed that I gave her Duplo building blocks. (Weird, I know.) When I woke up, I was convinced that was what I needed to get her. But alas, Target and Wal-Mart were lacking in plain Duplo blocks, so she ended up with something entirely different.
But I still felt that dream was divinely inspired. I thought, God, there must be something You want to show her, some lesson You want to teach her through those blocks! It would just be so great if I could find them!
Mm-mm. No. Jesus shook His head and said, "Yes, there's a lesson in those blocks...but it's for you."
Me?? Psh, what was I going to learn from Duplo blocks? My roomie is tons more creative than me; I thought surely she'd be able to understand it. But me, I could never get any meaning out of Duplo blocks. That's ridiculous.
Then the Lord led me to the song "Pieces," by Red.
I'm here again, a thousand miles away from You
A broken mess, just scattered pieces of who I am
I tried so hard, thought I could do this on my own
I've lost so much along the way
Then I see Your face
I know I'm finally Yours
I find everything I thought I'd lost before
You call my name
I come to You in pieces so You can make me whole
I've come undone, but You make sense of who I am
Like puzzle pieces in Your hand
I tried so hard, so hard
Then I see Your face
I know I'm finally Yours
I find everything I thought I'd lost before
You call my name
I come to You in pieces so You can make me whole
I'd listened to this song several times before it suddenly hit me. I don't want to call it a "vision," but that's almost what it was. An entire story flashed through my mind in a split second. It went something like this.
"What are we making, Daddy?" the little girl asked, trailing her fingers through the pile of colorful Duplo blocks.
"A special house," the Daddy replied. "It will be beautiful and perfect."
The little girl smiled. "When will it be done?"
"It will take a long time, and it will be hard," the Daddy said seriously. "Every single piece will have an important part, and we must make sure they are all in the right place. But it will be worth it."
The little girl frowned. "That doesn't sound very fun." She bit her lip and appeared to consider for a minute, then said hesitantly, "But I trust You, Daddy."
The little girl and the Daddy began building together. They built after His pattern for a while. But the little girl became impatient. "Daddy, I want this house done right now!" she insisted.
"It will not be as beautiful if we hurry it," the Daddy warned her. "We will not be able to follow My pattern."
"But I don't want to follow Your pattern!" she whined. "It's boring! I'll build this house on my own." And so saying, she threw herself over the unused Duplo blocks and pulled them away from her Daddy. "You come back in a while," she instructed Him, "and I'll surprise You with how purty it is." Sitting up proudly, she waved Him away, and began to build on her own.
With each passing day, the "house" looked less and less like a house. Pieces were lost, stolen by the neighbor boy, eaten by the dog, accidentally kicked under the couch. The little girl had not realized how much her Daddy had done to protect the pieces. But more importantly, the little girl did not know how to build on her own. She understood nothing of how to make a house, and she simply threw pieces haphazardly together, trying to make it "purty."
Finally, coming to work on her house one day, the little girl simply stopped and stared before bursting into tears. "This isn't a house," she said to herself. "It's just a big mess, and it's not purty, and I don't know how to fix it, especially because pieces are missing." She collapsed in a heap of little-girl skirts and little-girl tears, and began tearing down the house she was building.
When it was completely demolished, she went into the kitchen to find a tissue. Her Daddy was there. She jumped when she saw Him, and she hung her head, ashamed.
"What's wrong, sweetheart?" He asked tenderly. "How's your house?"
Her lip quivered as she tried to hold back a sob, but it burst forth anyway. "It's all in pieces," she said helplessly, opening her fist to reveal a handful of disconnected pieces.
The Daddy took His daughter in His arms. He held her and waited for her to calm down a bit before He said quietly, "We can start over."
The little girl shook her head. "Pieces are missing. It can't be what You wanted it to be. It will never be beautiful and perfect ever again, because I didn't guard the pieces, and You said every piece was important."
"You are right, we cannot build it the exact same way I wanted to, with the original pieces," the Daddy said. "But I have new pieces to replace the lost ones. It can still be just as perfect and beautiful."
The little girl looked at her Daddy, wide-eyed. "Really?"
He smiled and nodded. "Really. But this time, you have to follow My plan if you want it to turn out right. Otherwise we'll have to start all over again."
"I trust You," she said confidently. "And maybe there will be times when I don't, but You will help me, won't you?"
The Daddy took the pieces from His daughter's hand. "Always."
That vision meant something very specific to me, but it could apply to so many things. We have our own ideas about how to build a "house" -- whether it be a house of joy, purity, romance, happiness, success, whatever. We know what we want, we want it quickly, and we think God's plan is, frankly, a little boring.
But give it enough time, and we look at the thing we've created and realize it looks nothing like joy or purity or success at all. It looks like a mess. We tear it down in our frustration, and suddenly we have nothing but pieces. We think it can never look like what God intended.
But it can! Oh, Friend, it can.
"He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!'" (Revelation 21:5a)
"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17)
Christ is in the business of restoring our messes to the way they were originally supposed to be. And when He does, we know it had to be all Him... We are far too prone to error to have built something so beautiful.
No matter how much we have messed up... we are never so far He cannot completely rebuild us in His perfect image. He came so that we could be restored -- not so that we could wallow in our sin. He came to pull us out from the pit -- not so that we could be "saved," but remain in that pit. He came to rewrite our stories, rebuild our houses, restore our brokenness. He came that we might have life, and we should not expect a second-rate version of life because we messed up. He's bigger than that. Leslie Ludy writes, "Once you have been restored by Him, you are clothed in His righteousness. You are entitled to all the benefits of His amazing kingdom. Your forgiveness is complete. Your sin is removed as far from you as the east is from the west. It is finished."
The things we thought we'd lost forever...He makes them new. The things we thought were broken beyond repair...He makes them new. The things we thought we would never be able to do over...He makes new. He makes all things new. He gives second chance after second chance after second chance. How He loves!!
"I find everything I thought I'd lost before... I come to You in pieces so You can make me whole."
Ah, the lessons one learns from Duplos.
