Don't play ball in the house...

Technology is incredible. I am sitting outside in my back yard (yes, I have a back yard... yet another benefit of living in family housing) typing on the internet and there is not one single cord plugged into my computer. Whoa. It boggles my mind. It is such a pretty day. The sun is as beautiful as ever... and the sky is so blue. Not one cloud. I like clouds. I think they are fun. The puffy ones are my favorite. Maybe they are everybody's.

I am desperately trying to avoid studying for a biochem. test I have tomorrow morning. Gross. Sometimes I wish the Lord made us with a little disk drive where we could just pop in cd's and upload them to our brain. Kinda like you do with itunes. I would want to upload the one with scripture on it, so I could remember more of the Bible. I'd like a program to be able to remember peoples names and their stories so the next time I saw them I could just add more and not have to go back and ask them all the stuff they told me the first time around. I have a bad memory. If there was one that had sports on it, I'd like that one too. I have tried to learn the different rules, but I think my brain doesn't think like that.

I guess he didn't think that was good to make us like that, cause he didn't. I see some benefits to not remembering everything.. the most obvious being, you can forget. Forget things like arguments and words that hurt and the pain that sometimes comes from just living. Everybody has pain. Everybody has a story. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives we think we are the only ones who hurt. That's wrong. I guess the thing is, we live in a broken world. Broken to bits. Nothing works right. We catch glimpses every now and again of how things are supposed to be, but as a whole, everything is like shards of a glass from a broken vase. Like a little boy playing ball in the house after his mother told him not to, so is our life. We do things we know we aren't supposed to but it just seems so fun and like nothing could go wrong. Then the vase breaks. Ashamed, we try to scoop it all together and hide it, dreading being found out, feeling so guilty for ruining such a beautiful treasure. The thing is, God sees the brokeness, he knows we were playing ball in the house after he told us not to and knows we broke the vase. So what are we to do? The opposite of what we want to do. We want to hide. God tells us to come to him and confess. He says, repent and you will be saved. Here's the thing. He loved the vase, God did. He valued it, so he put a price on it. He said, anyone who breaks this must be punished. When we come to Him, and tell him we broke it, he doesn't just say, "Oh, it's ok, I didn't like that vase anyway." It breaks his heart. First, because he loved the vase, and second because he knows he has to stick to his guns, do what he said, and punish us. Yikes. Here's where Jesus comes in. It's like having a big brother who steps in and says, " I love my little brother. I told him not to play with the ball in the house, but he did anyway. He didn't listen to me.. now he's broken the vase. I know you said that you have to punish him, but if it is ok with you, I want to be punished instead of him." Now that brother didn't do one single thing wrong.. in FACT, he told the lil brother to stop playing with the ball.. he set a good example for him.. but the little brother didn't pay any attention. Jesus's love and the grace that he has given me, unmerited on my part, are more than I can ever understand. I didn't do anything for Him.. in fact, I did the opposite of what he showed me and asked me to do. Then, when I blew it, he didn't just run go tell dad... He took my punishment. And what does God do? Treats Jesus as if he is me, and me as if I am him. Perfect and without fault.

My favorite promise I have as a believer is that he takes all those shards of a life a have broken, of a world that is broken and, because of Jesus, pieces them together into more beautiful of a treasure than I could have ever dreamed. He scoops up the pieces of my broken vase and breaks and shapes them in ways I sometimes can't understand... and knowing full well what he is doing, places a radiant crown of splendor upon my head, looks at me, as if I owned the life of his beautiful son, and smiles.