Foreign Parts - by Ben Barnes

Last weekend, I put together a new swing set for Emaline, our ten month old daughter.  I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of assembling backyard toys in the past five years or so, but things have gotten confusing.  The box had all the proper equipment; walls, swing, slide, weird climby things, and instructions… that I threw away immediately.  But the box also had some very strange foreign tools and hardware.  I’ve worked with tools most of my life and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen the tool and hardware that came to assemble the swing set.  It looked more like punctuation than a tool.  Once I figured out what to do with the equipment, I was able to assemble the toy for my daughter, but it wasn’t without frustration, fear and trembling.  Had I read the instructions for the swing set, I would’ve skipped the whole frustration stage.  Emaline could’ve been swinging and sliding and having a great time with me, but instead, I chose to ignore the instructions and try things on my own.  It took me twice as long as it needed to, which made an angry dad, an upset baby, and a pretty long afternoon.

Sometimes life gets strange and we don’t know exactly what to do with the foreign parts that show up in our lives.  But the Bible is our instruction manual.  If we choose to read and follow the instructions, things go much better for us.