• Tearing Down To Rebuild

    By: Kristen L. McNulty



    On our summer vacation this year we headed out to my aunts cottage to spend some time lakeside. During our week there I decided to test out a few of the bikes to see if any of them were roadworthy.

    I found one with potential and got to work. Tightening lose nuts and bolts, realigning brakes and pumping tires. While inspecting one of the tires I saw that it had a lot of damage and wasn't trustworthy so I had to take it off, discard the old tire and tube and use any strength that I could muster to manoeuvre the new pieces onto the rim. At this point anyone who would have walked by and saw the mess of parts off and wheels missing could have seriously questioned both my methods and the odds of that bike ever working again. But it did and in the end ran even better than before.

    My purpose for sharing this story is to make the point that when something is in the middle of being repaired it could easily be mistaken for a hopeless mess and that never rings truer than when we're in the middle of difficult times in our lives.

    You might look at your parents marriage and see if moments away from being a trainwreck, but when God looks at it He sees two people who are going through this because they are masterpieces in the making.

    You might look at your bank account and do a little freak out, but when God looks at it He sees how the balance or lack thereof is going to mold you into the kind of person who relies on Him alone for provision.

    God takes the worst that this world has to offer and uses it to make us into people who are prepared for the life that awaits us when this world wastes away and we arrive into eternity.

    In Jeremiah 18:1-6, Jeremiah tells us about a message that God gave to him. We read:

    "'Go down to the potter's shop, and I will speak to you there.' So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over. Then the Lord gave me this message: 'O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand.'"

    You are God's handiwork and your life is in His hands. Do you realize that? I know I often think that I run through this world alone and from time to time God snatches me up when disaster strikes and I cry out to Him, but that's not the story that the Bible tells us.

    From the moment we are born until the moment we die we are in the hands of our loving and attentive Saviour. We might not always understand His methods of shaping us into new creations, but we must never doubt our place in His loving hands.

    We may never know the reasons why but we should never doubt one thing- that if God loved us so much that He died for our mistakes, would He really remove His love from us now and stop acting with our best intentions in mind?

    I don't only not think so, I know that's not so. Hang on, you're a masterpiece in the making and through this you're going to find beauty even in the broken.

    Reprint rights available on request. Email the author at kristenmcnulty@hotmail.com.

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