August 28, 2023
The Tree and the Train Station
An encounter with God in the midst of the pressures of everyday life.
July 30, 2024
His whispers came into conscious awareness as my 7 year old son shook my shoulder. I could barely make out the silhouette of his head beside me. “Dad, I fell out of bed.”
I blinked slowly. “...Huh?”
“I fell out of my bed…well, my bed fell and I did too.”
My eyes went wide as I shot up.
His loft bed was an early accomplishment in my short woodworking career. The bedframe was elevated about 5 feet from the ground, providing the perfect lego station beneath. I designed it without an engineering degree, confident that I was smart enough to figure it out. I had seen others build similar things, so I was knowledgeable enough to think that I knew what I was doing. Over time as a couple rungs of the ladder needed repair, my son asked me, “Do you think I’m safe up here?”
I pursed my lips to hide my gritted teeth. “Of course you are!” I said with a convincing smile.
Then it happened...
“Are you okay?!” I asked in a whispered panic, hoping his mom wouldn’t wake and discover the incident.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I’m okay.”
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We walked to his room to assess the damage. Sure enough, one side of the loft had given out, and the frame lay at a steep angle down to the floor. I cupped my forehead as I considered how much worse this could have been.
The next day I worked to dismantle and remove the loft ruins. As I took the frame apart I discovered a bent gray lego plate underneath. It was the kind that you’d use as a base, like a landscape or a floor. The hard plastic was bent at a sharp angle. It was the last remaining evidence of my carpentry debacle.
I often find myself in situations where I’m a bit over my head. At my worst, I wear a mask of feigned confidence hoping that no one is looking too closely as I try desperately to hide any sign of my incompetence. I wonder in these moments why people entrust responsibility to me. Do you ever find yourself, keenly aware of your dysfunctions and immaturities, wondering why in the world you’ve ever been entrusted with responsibility at all?
When we make mistakes with what we've been entrusted with, it's easy to believe the lie that "Someone must have made a mistake, entrusting that to us." How many of us are outwardly confident while inwardly terrified that someone will realize that we’re not quite sure what we're doing? The more of life I experience, the more I discover that no one knows fully what they're doing. Anyone who does anything well has had to learn to navigate the inevitability of their mistakes.
I've discovered that God is not threatened by our propensity to get it wrong.
I was shocked when I heard God say it. I was again faced with a slew of costly mistakes as a leader in ministry, wondering if people would be better off without me in the picture. I heard the Lord say, "I love to build with you Kyle." I could picture His warm smile as I heard it in my head. He brought to my memory a moment in which I was joyfully building lego creations with my son. Suddenly I became aware that the same joy I felt as I built poorly crafted towers with my son was the joy He felt as I learned to build with Him.
Collaboration is God’s nature. God loves to work with others, especially humans. He could do things so much better without us, but He’s not interested in that. He loves to build with us. We are the primary means by which He continues to work in the world. He loves to build with you. You. Specifically you, not the person next to you who you think can do it better. We can think of countless reasons why we’re not qualified, yet God keeps entrusting big things to little ol’ us.
God entrusts big things to you because He knows who you are better than you. He’s wired you to do big things alongside Him. Those large and looming responsibilities in your life are the context in which you get to partner with God. They provide the backdrop as you learn to co-labor with Him, and you’ll find that you are empowered to bring heaven to earth in those spaces.
He’s not afraid of our mistakes, He’s not threatened by them. He knows that the mistakes are a part of the development process. We grow our capacity to handle responsibility even when we do it poorly. A posture of humility and teachability goes a long way in growing us in the context of our mistakes.
The week following the loft disaster, my son entered a lego contest at the library. He built an alien spaceship. In the middle of the scene was the bent gray lego plate. It was the ramp of the spaceship, with people in action upon it. I raised my fist in victory. He transformed a failure into a masterpiece.
