ping pong lessons...Day 22

ping pong ball

 

I am not sure which is harder…playing ping pong or assembling a ping pong table from scratch.  What I do know is that putting a ping pong table together with a bunch of students and youth leaders is pretty awesome! 

The tables were not easy to put together.  The directions for assembly were cryptic.  The illustrations made you go “HUH?” And truth be told…we did a little improvising.  I loved all the different approaches people took…some were systematic, some were a little random (that was me), some were careful and meticulous, and others use brute force.  For a moment I stood back and just watched.  I realized that the process of putting together a ping pong table had a couple similarities to our spiritual lives.

1.        You can’t be passive…you've got to open the box.  The body of Christ just doesn’t work well when we are passive.  If we had all sat around admiring the boxes that the tables came in, we would never be able to serve those coming to celebrate and play in the ping pong tournament. Likewise, if we sit around passively in church but never jump in and participate we are not fulfilling God’s plan.

2.       Instructions are helpful.  The assembly instructions for the ping pong table were written by the designer of the table... The Bible isn’t a clever piece of literature with a few great ideas in it. It is very word of God, the One who designed us…it makes sense that we should pay attention to all that is written in it.

3.       We need everyone’s unique gifts to work the best.  Putting together the ping pong table really illustrated how we each bring different gifts to the table (pun intended) and each of those gifts contributed something to the finished project, not to mention the building experience. The same is true for the body of Christ.

4.       Sometimes we need help.  While assembling the tables there were times when someone would help another person who was struggling with a drill, or hinge, or something.  Same thing is true in our spiritual journeys…we all need help understanding the directions sometimes, or help getting back on track when we veer of the path.

5.       We need to get rid of the garbage.  The ping pong tables came in large boxes that took up a lot of space.  If we had left them on the floor and tried to assemble around them or worse yet, tried to run the tournament with them…they would have got in the way and slowed everyone down, and some one could get hurt by tripping of sliding on one.  Same with our spiritual walks…we need to get rid of the junk that can hurt us or hurt others…laying aside the sin that so easily entangles us (from Hebrews 12:1)

I was just thinking…it’s wild…I‘ve prayed to God asking for help keeping my mind and heart open to the ways he is revealing himself to me…but I never thought when I started this blog project that he would use a ping pong table assembly experience as a blog topic!