Man: Tech manual neatly wrapped in plastic, temporarily discarded, we open up our package of life and approach our future as it presents itself to us. Pieces and parts randomly scattered, we take on the challenge in a sequence that feels most comfortable to our style of learning. Sizing up parts against joints and screws for compatibility, sorting like-pieces for organizational ease, measuring the parts that make up the whole, we visualize the final product in its perfection, then we reward ourselves for our genius in problem-solving and we take a break. The break turns into a nap and the nap turns into other things to do and the other things turn into a very touchy project on our honey-do list. Eventually we are missing pieces and all of these things become a giant question about our competence to finish what we started.
Questions about this world are met with mystery and uncertainty. Answers change in time and space and true becomes different and impossible becomes likely. The rock-solid truths we built our lives on can become an avalanche of miscalculation in the time it takes to take a nap. A magical dream of assurance can converge into a horrific perpetual nightmare. Postponed opportunities can disappear, never to return. The certainty of the world’s course is that there is no certainty in the world, of course!
All of this can be resolved by starting out with the tech manual but, at any point, the manual can rescue a failed project. The Book of our lives, which knows us personally and knows the pieces that fit and tools to use, knows the measure of time we need to build perfect peace. If we take the nap we may have to start at a different point. If we allow the nap to turn into an ongoing project, it may cost us opportunities but our Book of instructions has the power to meet us at the point of our needs and give us personal instruction on how to finish the project successfully. When the project we started begins to look like a shabby, weak, disjointed divergence from the product we intended it to be, the manual for mankind, the Bible, is exactly what is needed at the exact time of need.
Woman: Why is the manual still in the plastic? Let’s see what the manual says. Project complete!
“One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).” – Leonard Ravenhill
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