Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Last weekend when my son and I were having our daily “bro time,” we pulled out the Lego miscellaneous tub. While searching through piles of various sizes and colors, something dawned on me. The tub was predominately the disassembled remnants of themed sets which I meticulously put together for my son when he received them as Christmas or birthday presents. What caught my attention was how I was able to see pieces of different sets which were separated from their designed use, but the pieces where still useful in other ways.

So often, our lives seem to be a big bucket of randomness, yet God can see and know the intended purpose. As well, for the Lord, there is no such thing as random lives or discarded people.

I have often mentioned here how much raising children has impacted and shaped my understanding and view of God’s love, care, and concern for every single person.  I believe it is important to remind us how God loves all people, not just those who believe in Jesus and strive to live their lives for Him.  Unfortunately, I have been around many in the church throughout my life who assume God only loves the “good” people (conveniently these folks define who is good), and He does not love bad people.  John 3:16 is clear: God loves the WORLD!  That includes people who are not like us and whose lives often look like a bucket of random and disoriented Lego pieces and sets.  Friends, God can take the broken pieces of any person, any life, and any situation and do something better than our minds could conceive on our own.

‘For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.’  Ephesians 3:14-21

Friends, you may feel your life is in pieces.  I assume many of us feel the world is in pieces from Covid, the economy, and cultural tension.  The reality we must continue to cling to is “Our God is ABLE, PERIOD!”

I leave you with this:

All these pieces Broken and scattered

In mercy gathered Mended and whole

Empty-handed But not forsaken

I’ve been set free I’ve been set free

You take our failure You take our weakness

You set your treasure In jars of clay

So take this heart Lord I’ll be your vessel

The world to see Your life in me, oh

 

Amazing Grace How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost But now I am found Was blind but now I see

Oh, I can see you now Oh, I can see the love in your eyes

Laying yourself down Raising up the broken to life

Songwriters: Jonas Myrin / Joel Houston

 

Give Him the pieces of your life and see what He can do!

You are Valued and Loved, Pastor B

 

Rev. Brad McKenzie is Lead Pastor at Orange First Church of the Nazarene, 3810 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Orange.