Missing Pieces

 

"Dad, look at this awesome Lego set!"  My son, Elliot, said.

I looked at the Amazon page that Elliot had on the screen.  It was some kind of coast guard vessel.  Then, I saw the price and blinked.  It was over 200 dollars.  "You'll need to lose a lot of teeth to be able to afford that set," I told him.  "Is that the most expensive Lego set?"

"Oh, no," he answered with confidence.  "Some of the Star Wars sets are four or five hundred dollars!"

"Really?" I was stunned.  "Who buys Lego sets for hundreds of dollars?"

"People with lots of money," Elliot replied, as though it was a silly question, which it probably was.  People who are struggling to find money for gas or medicine are (hopefully) not going to drop hundreds of dollars on a Lego set -- even if it is a slightly functional replica of the Millennium Falcon.

My children have been given a number of different Lego sets through the years, although none as expensive as the one that Elliot was looking at.  The interesting thing that I have found is that while Lego sets are often completed, they don't remain whole.

Instead, they are taken apart to occasionally be reassembled.  We have, in tubs, the equivalent of five airplanes, a semi-tractor trailer, a Lego train, and even a pirate Lego set.

Truth to tell, humans are a little like Lego sets.  We are probably all there at the beginning, but bit by bit, life knocks pieces off.  If we suffer a serious trauma, everything may fly apart -- just like a Lego Coast Guard ship would upon being dropped on a tile floor -- leaving little that resembles the original, only a pile of rubble.

The wonderful thing about our Heavenly Father is that He is a God of restoration.  Jeremiah 17:14 says, "Heal me Lord and I will be healed."  Psalm 23 contains the short statement, "He restores my soul."

There are so many times that we cannot even find the pieces to put things back together.  This does not stop God from doing so.  He loves us and sees us, even fragmented as we are.  He knows that we are more valuable than even the most expensive Lego set out there -- and that's saying a lot.