Now there are three words that stop me in my tracks and cause me to break a sweat. I first became acquainted with these words a long time ago as a new father. It seemed that the kids’ Christmas and birthday presents always had these words attached—some assembly required. And some usually meant a bunch.
These words came with our newly purchased cabinets for the Church Fellowship Hall renovation. The cabinets came in nicely packed boxes. The directions for assembly were..well…vague to say the least. But, how hard can it be. After all, I have some highly educated men working on this project. There are three of us. All three have a college education, one a master’s degree in administration and another in education specializing in special education and then me with a bachelor’s in ministry. Yeah, we got this. I could not have been more mistaken. The directions were basically hieroglyphics. There were a lot of pictures of a large part of the cabinet with about a jillion little pieces connecting to it. Then, there was another part that attached to it. All of this is held together with cam locks (didn’t even know what that was until this project) and dowels. After this was done there was another piece that connected to these two with…you guessed it… more dowels and cam locks.
Problem was the hieroglyphical pictures didn’t say which piece to begin with and what order to proceed! This made the first cabinet (which was a corner base cabinet) challenging and quite frustrating. So frustrating that we almost considered loading them up and returning them to the merchant we where we purchased them.
We discovered there was a video (You-Tube has videos for everything) to show how to assemble. We watched the video, and the guy assembling the cabinet made it look so easy. It was not. We ended up just going home and sleeping on it (assembling the cabinet in our dreams) and returned the next morning with a vigor and determination to complete this task.
After an hour and a half, mission accomplished! One cabinet down only 19 to go. With the concept figured out we began the second cabinet. It was a simple base cabinet with doors and a shelf. It went a little faster (only took an hour on this cabinet). I think, “We are getting the hang of this.”
Wait, what is this hole in the front? What goes there…a drawer? Great, now there is a new challenge. One of the guys said, “I got this,” and he did. He was our drawer assembler guy. Now we are cooking. We are whipping out a cabinet in about 35 minutes.
In a matter of three days we assembled 16 base cabinets. The cabinets had some with doors and some with drawers (28 drawers to be precise). After the assembly, we set the cabinets on the wall, and the serving island we mounted to the floor. We felt a wave of accomplishment as we stood back and looked at the finished product.
Some assembly required… usually means gird up your loins and get ready to go work. It also describes the Christian life. You don’t just become a believer/ Christian and have it all figured out. I think this is kind of what Philippians 2:12 means, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (emphasis on work out).
This does not mean work to earn your salvation but to live out your salvation, figure it out as you live your life. We don’t know all there is to being a believer once we pray the prayer of salvation. We have to learn much as we go.
The Bible is our instruction book and, let’s face it, can seem like hieroglyphics that are hard to understand. We read something and are like, “Huh?” Or, sometimes things happen in life that we totally do not understand. “Why is this happening… now…to me?” Maybe we think that as a believer we should be immune to this something in particular happing.
But, the confusion is there, confusion followed by disappointment or frustration. However, we get past whatever it is, the Bible passage begins to become clear and make sense. The crisis is over, and we are stronger having gone through it and are better prepared for the next crisis.
As time goes on and we mature, it’s kind of like the cabinet assembly, we are ready and know how to get through whatever comes our way. The Bible passages begin to make more sense and give us understandable direction. Just like I could look at the directions for the cabinets and think, “Oh yeah, now I see how it goes.” We can do the same for Scripture.
When we see the words, “Some Assembly Required” we can meet it head on with certain confidence and conquer the project at hand! Now to do the wall cabinets… but that is another story for another time!
Bro. Tim
