Daily Lesson for March 16, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John 6 verse 12:

And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.”

God wastes nothing and God leaves nothing behind. 

God is always gathering up the broken, leftover fragments of our lives and repurposing them.  Whether they be broken dreams, broken relationships, or fragments of our lives we would rather leave behind, God's way is to gather it all up, put it into His basket, and see what might be made of it or used from it later on. 

For God, nothing in our lives is of no use; and that includes all the many disappointments, rejections, and  failures we endure along the way. As Richard Rohr says, with God, "everything belongs" -- that includes both the beautiful and also the broken. 

One of my boyhood pastors, John Claypool, used to tell a story about another little kindergarten boy who with his teacher's help made an ashtray for his father one Christmas. They molded and shaped the clay, fired it in the kiln, painted it his father's favorite color, then wrapped it. The present was to be given to his father following the kindergarten's Christmas program.  After the program, the boy ran to get the gift-wrapped ashtray, but in his hurry to give it to his father tripped running down the hall and dropped the gift. The ashtray hit the floor and shattered within the wrapping paper. The boy began sobbing unconsolably. Trying to calm his son, the father told him not to cry.  "It doesn't make any difference," he told his son.  But the boy's mother knew better. She bent down on the hallway floor and began to cry with her boy. Then she said, "Let’s pick up the pieces and take them home and see what we can make with them."

God intends to do something with the broken pieces of our lives, and that is why He asks us to gather them all up and carry them with us.