Predesigned Parts

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
Hebrews 11:13-16 NLT

I paid for my higher education by being an assembler for Walmart. I put together bikes and furniture and lawn mowers and barbecue grills... At Christmas time, I built bikes for 3 different stores. For the most part, I liked doing it. One of the incentives was getting to the end of a workday and being able to actually see what had been done. 

The items came in a box with predesigned parts and (sometimes) directions for how to put them together. The challenging ones were those boxes that had too many parts or worse - not enough parts. Too many meant I had to go back over everything to make sure I hadn't missed any connections. Not enough meant trips to the hardware department to see if I could find the missing parts. 

Those boxes messed up my workday. I got paid piecework - so much per item - and when I had to go over an item twice or go find hardware, I didn't get paid for that extra time. Sometimes, the store didn't carry the missing part and we'd have to file the paperwork to order the part(s) that should have been in the box. Early on, I learned to look for all the hardware. I knew which ones were most likely to be missing parts, etc. The expectation was that boxes from certain makers were not going to have what was needed for the finished project. 

I was thinking about that today in relation to our walk with God. What is our expectation at this stage in life? Have our life experiences caused us to think that there are parts missing in our lives and we may never get it right?  Or maybe we've had too many of some parts of life thrown into our path so that now we expect to trip and fall... 

Let me tell you something I know to be true. God predesigned you to be part of His perfect plan. He put all your parts together. He knew what you would need to be able to accomplish His purpose for your life. Think about it. Maybe you needed the strength to be an overcomer. I would remind you that you can't be an overcomer unless you've had something to overcome... You don't know the joy of winning until you've known the pain of losing. All sunshine sounds good, but no rain leaves us in a drought with no flowers and a dried-up lawn. So, yes, even pain and rain are parts of His plan. It's perfect. Exactly what you need for the big finish.

Prayer:

Father,

           As hard as it is, and as crazy as it sounds, we thank You and praise You for all the parts we consider to be too much, for all the parts we perceive as missing, for the pain and the rain. Build us into Your perfect plan in Your perfect timing. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen