I go to Anderson University, and it’s a Christian based school. So every wednesday, we have to go to this thing called Chapel, and it’s basically a church service that lasts an hour. I looove AU. A million freakin’ times better than high school, everyone is so sweet and loving. But anyway, I was at Chapel one day, and there was a someone preaching, telling this story. The story seemed so random until I realized what it was about. I will tell it here, because it is so moving and beautiful. Here it goes:
“There was a family made up of a mommy, daddy, and a little boy. Now, the dad would go to work early in the morning and get home at 5 in the evening. But the little boy was always so excited to see his dad, he would ask his mom about when daddy comes home. At 10:00 in the morning, the boy went to his mom and said, “when is daddy coming home? I want to play with him so much! Is he almost home?” The mom replied
“Sorry, it will be awhile before he gets home. He’ll be here before you know it.” So the kid waits an hour and at 11:00, he asks, “when is daddy coming home? I really wanna see him so we can play now! When is he coming?” His mom replied
“He gets here at 5, he’s not here just yet, honey.” But the little boy was so excited, he couldn’t stand waiting, and so he goes to his mom every hour and asks, and she says the same thing.
So finally, 5:00 p.m. rolls around, and just a little after 5, the dad pulls up in his car. The boy is so excited, when his dad comes in, he asks, “daddy, can we play? I waited all day for you to come home so we could finally play! Now you’re home, what do you wanna play, daddy?” The dad really wanted to play with his son, but he was also tired from work, so he said, “Son, I had a rough day at work. So just give me 5 minutes to relax in this chair and read the newpaper. Then, we can play afterwards.” So the boy said,
“Okay, daddy. 5 minutes, then we can finally play.” So the boy goes away for 5 minutes and comes back. But the dad is so suprised 5 minutes is already up, so he says,
“just give me 5 more minutes then we can really play.” So the boy goes away and about 3 minutes later, he comes out and asks,
“Daddy, I’ve waited 5 minutes. I really, really, really wanna play. Can we play now?” But the dad is looking for just a little more time so he tears out a map of the world from the newspaper, and tears it into pieces. The dad gives it to his son and says,
“Put this map of the world together and when you get done, we can play.” But the dad knows his son doesn’t know where Venezuela or Asia or South America is, he knows he has no clue how to put it back together, but the father is so tired, he’s looking just to buy a little more time. A few minutes later, the boy comes to his dad and shows him the world. He says,
“Dad! I put the world together, just like you asked!” The dad is so suprised, he asks,
“How did you put this together? You don’t know where Venezuela or the Philippines or any of these places are. How did you figure this out?” He responds,
“Well, there was a picture of a man on the back, and once I put him together, the world came together.””
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And that’s the story. The moral is the same with Christ: we often say we’ll pay attention to God and do what he says when our worlds come together, but our worlds never come together- there are problems and circumstances in life that are always affected us. But if we focus on the man, Christ, he will help us put our worlds togehter. Then he will shape us, and that will change our worlds. However, it’s very ironic- when I focus on Christ, I often find my world is flipped upside down.
And this is what I learned at Chapel at AU. I know this story is true because my life was that way. My world was falling apart- my heart into pieces, my dreams never being achieved, and life was just so hard. It was hard to deal with my mom who always seemed distant and my family.I wrote poetry alllll the time to vent about how much pain I would feel. My biological dad was never around. I listened to a bunch of dark music because it so easily fit my mood. I depended solely on poetry to get my feelings out to make myself feel better, constantly thinking, “If I could just get it off my chest, I could finally heal and be renewed and get on with life.”
But I would write obsessively and got nowhere. In fact, when I was done writing, I felt worse than when I started.
I found that my feelings were all jumbled up and I had a million thoughts running around at once. I would try to focus on one, and I couldn’t get anything down. And other times, even though there were so many things to think about, I couldn’t think of anything at all. It was very frustrating. The more I tried to put the pieces of my heart back together, the more they dissipated and fell into thousands of pieces. At one point, I thought I was going insane and thought I would probably end up dead in a matter of months if I didn’t get this pain out of my heart, this insanity running around inside me.
I was trying to put my world together, but I couldn’t figure out where the pieces went, like in the story. But after I thought I had no other choice but to trust God, I just gave up and told him I trusted him, and I meant it in my heart. And almost instantaneously, I could feel him picking the pieces of my heart up and putting them back together. He corrected the damage I had done over a course of years in a matter of a few months. And I felt more free than I had literally ever felt in my life. So sweet. I had finally accepted Christ in my heart. So by putting my faith in Christ, my world came back together, not the other way around. It’s never the other way around- trying to put our world together without Christ only causes us to be miserable and constantly frustrated. Nobody wants to go through pain, I didn’t want to, so just trust him to lead you, and I swear he’ll take care of your world for you.
Now I don’t need to write poetry to feel better, even though I do it for fun, now. I just need to spend time with him, be close to him in my heartb and my pain disappears. He carries me on his wings- I never carry myself.
God bless you and good luck. I love you all to no end. 🙂
Atypical Jesus 