Building Blocks

One of the classic children's toys-- for I don't know how long-- has been blocks. They've been changed and "improved", so that now we have plastic blocks instead of wooden. (The better to not break heads open, my dear! ;)) And really cool blocks with activities in the middle. But kids of all ages (and the young at heart) LOVE to play with blocks. One of my Crew's favorite activities with blocks has always been, "how high can we stack them?". But we all know that to stack them high, we have to have blocks underneath.

You may have heard of the idea that we should try to read a text from Scripture as though we'd never read or heard it before. First of all, that is impossible. (Unless you really are reading it for the first time.) Second, that is really not helpful. It's like building blocks. The first time you read a passage, you get a bit of information. But the next time you read that passage, your mind (through the Spirit) is able to build on the information you already have. And that process continues so that after having read a passage ten times, I've built a small "tower" of knowledge about the passage and what it is telling me about God. And even more so after reading thirty, fifty, a hundred times and more. Now WHY would I want to put all that aside when I read? It would be like my Crew wanting to build a six foot tower, but tearing it down every time we had a five block stack! The objective is to KNOW God, the means is by reading and studying His Scriptures-- repeatedly! =)

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Ephesians 4:11-16