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Nuts and Bolts

Have you ever tried to figure out how something works? Perhaps as a child you pulled apart a watch to see what made it tick. Maybe you dismantled a radio to see how sound could travel out of such a small space. Discovering the mechanism behind an invention provides fascination for many people.

Many people throughout the years have also tried to find out how living things work. Unfortunately living things cannot be put back together after they've been taken apart. There's really no way around this. In fact if we truly take apart something that is living the organism will have to sacrifice its life in order to satisfy our curiosity.

Strangely enough God has taken apart something that is very real and living in order for us to be able to understand how it works. He has dismantled His everlasting covenant so that we might understand the parts of a loving relationship. Carefully exposing each part He has pulled back the covering to label each piece for our benefit.

God's disclosure has the same drawbacks of any other project that requires disassembling the components. There is always the danger that not all the pieces will be put back together. There is also the danger that if each piece is put back it won't be put back in the right place or in the right way.

What makes dismantling of God's covenant all the more risky is that it is not just a mechanical device designed to teach us about God. It is a living thing that imparts life to anyone who chooses to live by its principles. Every other living thing that is taken apart dies as a result. Yet God still chooses to reveal the gears of His covenant.

In order to teach us about love God tried to make it simple. In doing so He exposed the way that a covenant relationship works. Unfortunately many people do not understand how the pieces fit together and they often don't even try to put them back in the first place.

A living covenant needs all of its parts to breathe life into us. We need to understand the nuts and the bolts, not so that we can simply be experts at labeling the parts, but so that we can be complete, lacking in nothing.

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