If we’re willing to be honest, most of us would have to confess we usually just throw away the instructions that come with putting the new bookcase together. After all, how hard can it be? We lay out all the pieces, look at the picture on the front of the manual and off we go. We know what to do from there. The odd part is that for some unknown reason, we actually put the bottom of the bookcase on the top, and well, we made one of the front pieces the back, so now there’s a rough part. Okay, so maybe we should have taken a look at the directions.
For some of us, we view life the same way. We imagine we can just do this thing called life without any kind of guidance. After all, we’re smart. We are reasonable human beings, and well, how hard can it be? It’s interesting that we resist the help that is available to us. We imagine we don’t need a guide, much less a book of instructions, and yet, it appears that God knew better. He tried letting us do life on our own, just chatting with us from day to day, and yet we still managed to blow it. We still fell down. Perhaps that’s what caused God to try to help, initially carving out some people who could tell His stories. Then, when they were entangled with so many rules they didn’t know what to do, He offered the ten big rules that could make their lives better. Whittled down from hundreds of rules to ten should have made things easier, but they tried to construct life on their own terms once again and so they left the instruction manual in a box.
Jesus came along and He essentially cut the rule book down again, offering just two basics…you know, love God, and love your neighbor. Those two rules about love were great. The problem is that it turns out loving others isn’t as easy as it sounds. Loving others means I have to get over my own prejudices, my own errors of judgment and thinking. It means I have to believe that God loves the whole world, and not just me. Now that’s mind boggling, but it brings me back to the help we need.
The instruction manual that we know of as The Bible, actually gives us insights and ideas about everything from how to love others, to the crazy thinking of human beings, to the realization that there’s more to getting to know God than most of us realize. So, what’s the point? The point is that if we need a rule book to put a bookcase together, it’s pretty sure we need some kind of guide to get this life thing right. Sure, we’re smart. We have some of what it takes to be successful, but chances are if we try to do it all by ourselves, in the end, we aren’t going to build the future we were hoping for.
God hears your cry for help. He is sending you a guide.