Bring It to Me

Welcome to Scattered Moments. These are brief reflections on faith, adversity, and the quiet places where grace appears. You know, there are few moments in a father's life more humbling than 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve with a half-assembled toy spread across the floor. Years ago, one of our boys was getting a Millennium Falcon for Christmas, and apparently before you were allowed to join the Rebel Alliance, you first had to demonstrate proficiency in mechanical engineering. I had the pieces everywhere: screws, panels, plastic parts, instructions that appeared to have been translated from another language into English by someone who had never actually seen a Millennium Falcon. The problem was this large panel with windows. According to the instructions, it was supposed to attach to the base with several screws. Except the screws didn't fit. I pushed, I twisted, I took things apart, put them back together again, nothing worked. And Christmas morning was getting closer. A friend from church named Nick had bought the same Millennium Falcon for his son. Our boys were best friends, and I could already picture Christmas morning. His son would wake up to a Millennium Falcon and Mom would wake up to a Millennium Catastrophe. So I called Nick. He patiently tried to talk me through it. There should be some different kinds of screws, long ones and short ones. You're probably using the wrong screws. I tried again, nothing. Still nothing. After several attempts to diagnose my Christmas Eve disaster over the phone, Nick finally said the most beautiful words I had ever heard. Bring the Millennium Falcon to me. Ah, what relief. I hated to ask him. It was ten PM on Christmas night, but he was only a couple of houses down. I packed up the falcon, the pieces, the screws, the instructions, and what remained of my dignity, and I took the whole mess to Nick. He looked at it, he disassembled most of what I had done, and within ten minutes it was finished. All that frustration, all that effort, all those screws. And the solution was simply bringing it to someone who knew what he was doing. There's a moment in Matthew 17 that reminds me of that Christmas evening. Jesus had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John had seen something extraordinary. They'd seen Jesus in his glory. Moses and Elijah had appeared, the voice of God had spoken, and when Jesus comes down from the mountain, he walks right straight into a mess. A father approaches him. His son is suffering terribly. The father has already taken the boy to Jesus' disciples, but they couldn't help him. And then Jesus says something wonderfully simple. Bring the boy here to me. Bring him to me. The boy who is hurting. The boy nobody else can fix. The boy whose father has probably exhausted every option he knows. The boy the disciples couldn't help. Bring him to me. And I wonder how many times I've done exactly what I did with that Millennium Falcon. I've taken some problem in my life into my own little emotional workshop and I've spread out all the pieces across the table. I've studied it, I've analyzed it, worried about it, rearranged it, tried the long screws, tried the short screws, taken it apart, put it back together. I've tried to predict what everyone else might do. I've rehearsed conversations that haven't happened. I've developed contingency plans for my contingency plans. And sometimes after exhausting every other possibility, I finally pray. I finally come to him with my arms wide open. You know that feeling that we have to fix everything for ourselves. We we call that self-reliance. Sometimes it looks responsible, but underneath it can be something Jesus confronted again and again, a lack of faith. Faith isn't believing that if I work hard enough, eventually I'll figure everything out. And faith isn't believing that Jesus will always make circumstances turn out exactly the way I want them to. Faith is believing that Jesus is who he says he is. It is trusting his wisdom, his timing when I don't understand, his strength when I don't have enough, his goodness when circumstances don't make sense, his sovereignty when everything fills out of control. And sometimes the hardest part of faith is simply admitting I can't fix this. There are things in life too complicated for us. People we cannot change, wounds we cannot heal, questions we cannot answer, grief we cannot carry, futures we can't control. And shame sometimes whispers that we shouldn't bring those things to Jesus. It's just too messy. I'm too embarrassed, too insignificant, too far gone. Maybe we've even prayed about it before and nothing seemed to happen, so we carry the pieces back in our own little emotional workshop. And we are well, we start tinkering again, but Jesus is still saying, Bring it to me. Bring me the child that you can't fix. Bring me the relationship you can't repair. Bring me the grief you can't carry. Bring me the question you can't answer. Bring me the future you can't control. Bring me the sin you're ashamed to confess. Bring the situation that has finally convinced you that you don't have enough strength, wisdom, or cleverness to put everything back together. Bring it to me. Because faith isn't having all the right screws. Faith isn't understanding all the instructions. Faith isn't knowing how everything is going to turn out. Faith is knowing who to hand the pieces to