Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Boxes and Tape

You are the boxes, I am the Tape; apart from Me, you can hold nothing.

I've been dealing with boxes today. At work I was carrying around a box that had some steel pipe in it that I was working on. I was under the impression that the bottom was taped together, however it was not. The four flaps were only interlocked so as to provided a false sense of security, I thought the box would carry almost anything and stay together, however the bottom dropped out from it. I was let down by the box as I found out it was not taped. I cast it to the ground in anger as my parts spread all across the shop floor.

Sometimes we as people are like boxes. We have boxes in our lives that give us a false sense of stability or security and these boxes help us to carry on, but only lead us to be dissappointed when these boxes eventually burst open from the bottom spilling the contents of our lives out. We feel let down, violated, and even more insecure then when we started off. So we cast our box or boxes to the ground in anger, go find another box that is bigger/newer/more dependable, gather up the contents of our lives, put them into the new box and go on only to find that this box shares the same weakness as every other box. It isn't Taped at the bottom. Whether the box is ourselves, someone else, a job, or something else is irrelevant.

When I put the box back together by interlocking the 4 flaps I went and found some Tape and made the box stay together. I returned the parts to the box and it held just fine.

Boxes are important, and adding a little extra strength to them by interlocking the flaps is a wise course of action as long as you are not trusting on the interlocking of the flaps to save you. The Tape is what holds your box together and keeps the contents inside and will give you a true sense of security. We are even more like boxes when you think of how dirty boxes can get. They get covered in oil, dirt, water and all the other stuff in this world that would cause the Tape to stick very poorly. Fortunately when we seek after the Tape, and realize our need for the Tape, the Tape gives us a new box, it's clean made of plastic so that when it does get dirty the dirt won't stick or ruin the box.

I may be trying to run this analogy of our relationship to Christ a bit too far, but the truth is still there. Without full dependance on Christ we will be continually let down.

Now here I am, wishing I had some packing tape for the boxes that I need to put stuff in so my parents don't have to worry about my stuff.

Thanks for being my Tape Jesus. Without You I'd fall apart at the seams. You hold me together, have given me new life, a new name and taken me as Your own. I'll praise Your name forever. I love You!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great Analogy David. Funny and true.
You must be a Wise Guy!

Love Me,
AYBFMA

friend said...

God is kinda like 3m - makes the boxes and the tape.

friend said...

Just had more and more complements on your rail last night. They all like it the best. It is plush. PS - Tom cut the light poll for us in two pieces very nice. Any chance that they could be powder coated. If not- no worries we can try waxing them - and If your schedule slows down and you can do the other grind rail it would be awesome. Thanks again for your contribution, it is paying off.