Oh, so that's what I need....

I spend a little time on occasion just perusing ideas on Pinterest because I like to see what creative things others come up with to either save money, make something old new again, or reuse something in a totally different way. It gives me ideas and some of them I actually put into use in my home. What 'worked' for someone else begins to find a way to 'work' in my life, as well. It may be that they show me how to create a raised garden bed and I adopt those ideas as I create my own. It has been useful to see ways people hide pesky cables that gather behind our media stations in life. Sometimes I know what I want to create, but there are no plans I can find. That is when I have to make a "prototype" of the object. It is pieced together in the fashion I 'believe' will work, but not every prototype I create actually works very well! Some make it no further than the scrap pile. Others work 'okay', but they aren't really what I desired. It is good to know that God has a plan for us - he isn't 'winging it' with us. He has purposed how all things in our life should come together, in perfect order, in such a manner so as to allow what he purposes for us to come to fruition. 

We are His work. He has made us to belong to Christ Jesus so we can work for Him. He planned that we should do this. (Ephesians 2:10)

We are his work - we don't direct how the pieces come together - he does. This is probably one of the hardest things for us to remember in life because we think we have the perfect plan. We think we can sustain our way of living, but we forget that his plans may not allow what we have used to 'sustain' life to be there for much longer. For example, when a door closes on a work experience, it becomes harder for us to sustain our way of living without that job. We might even find ourselves scrambling to find a 'replacement' for that experience, because we have deemed it extremely important to not live in a cardboard box on the street! We go through all manner of scheming and planning to create the perfect 'workmanship' in our lives, but forget all the while that his plans may differ significant from ours. We are his work - we need to settle that issue right now. We may think we know the direction we are to be headed, but we also need to be open to his movements in our lives that will change that direction, sometimes completely while at others only marginally.

He made us to belong to Christ Jesus - so we can work for him. We aren't created without a purpose in life. We are created to first of all belong. We belong to Christ - we don't walk alone - we haven't been rejected, standing out there unprotected and alone in this life. We have been given grace, embraced by Christ, and now we belong to Christ. We are actually created to belong - it is a good thing to belong to the one we are created for - outside of realizing it is 'in him' that we belong, we will always seek to 'belong', but will struggle to find where it is we actually belong! Grace upon grace actually is a 'condition' of belonging. We are given his love and shown how deep his love is by the continually infusion of his grace. It is this continually infilling of his grace that helps us 'feel' that we belong. Our work begins the moment we realize we 'belong' to someone other than ourselves. We were not created to please ourselves - but to work for and in Christ Jesus. We belong and find our greatest reward in working for and in him.

We could resist this plan for a long time, but eventually we would find whatever we pursued would be less than fulfilling. We might enjoy a modicum of 'fulfillment', but we would never realize our full purpose because we are only fulfilled to the degree that we allow ourselves to be engaged in the work we were created to do in Christ Jesus. Just sayin!