Boxes

Boxes, cartons, crates, trunks, containers, chests.

Whatever you want to call them, I am good at making them and even better at putting myself, others and God in them.

Recently I have noticed how often I box myself in. Doubt my abilities, my talents, skills and even though I do have pretty rad nunchuck skills, it’s so easy to write myself off when I am presented with the unknown. Although I have taken a big step in the last few months and moved away from the known, the comfortable and the secure, the unknown frightens me. And I don't frighten easily.

Surely I could employ my rad nunchuck skills to pummel every thing that frightens me and causes me to box myself in. I could even ask an even more 'chukky' weapon, that is ask Mr Chuck Norris himself to do the bashing. But no matter how much I try to beat these issues that box me in on my own, it just doesn't seem to work.

The same thing applies with how quick I am to stereotype people. I hate the fact that I do this, because I get so frustrated when I feel I have been stereotyped, but its a trap, a hole, a giant abyss I fall into so easily. Once again, no amount of nunchuck skills or raw, brutal Chuck Norris muscle can change these attitudes, these thoughts that I often succumb to.Funny that the one person that can help me take myself out of my self-imposed boxes and stop boxing in others is the one I box the most. That is, God, the creator of the universe.

Funny that I should limit the one who placed the stars in the sky, whose thoughts towards me are more than every grain of sand and who knows the number of hairs on my head (and in my hairbrush).

Ephesians 3:20 states that God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.

I’m pretty sure that the God who created our universe, who loves me (and you!) and cares about every detail of my life (and yours!) will break down the boxes in my life and with his power (not my own) and lead me into a box-less (or at least a box-reduced and box-decreasing) state of being.

Instead of building boxes, I seek to build on the rock. And that rock is Jesus. A rock, that even in all of his glory, Chuck Norris could not defeat. Now, that certainly is a foundation to build upon.

The Wise and Foolish Builders

"Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete." Luke 6:46-50 (NIV)