The Parable of the Bionicle
A few weeks ago Jared bought a large Bionicle set. It was a vehicle with a driver; 390 pieces in all. For those of you that don’t know, Bionicles are construction toys made by Lego. You buy the average 40-50 piece action figure in a canister with an instruction booklet. Part of the fun of Bionicles is that you get to build each figure as well as play with them.
Jared anxiously opened the large box, which revealed four bags full of small pieces and four corresponding booklets of instructions. He put the driver figure together in short order, but the vehicle, all 335 pieces of it, was a mammoth undertaking. He began the construction by spreading the pieces across the table in front of him. He then opened the instruction booklet to step one and followed each direction carefully. He knew that every step must be completed with precision, because the next step would build upon the last.
I watched in wonder hour after hour as he focused and diligently worked on the construction, only occasionally asking for help. He showed amazing patience and skill for such a little boy. During particularly challenging parts he would check and recheck the instructions and then wrinkle his nose and furrow his eyebrows as he connected the pieces.
After several hours the vehicle started to take shape. He could see which was the front and which was the back; he could visualize in his mind what the completed vehicle would look like and that is when he started to have problems. Soon each advancing step, rather than a joy, became a aggravation to him. He would remove parts in disgust and turn back pages and start again. Finally in frustration he came to me with the instruction booklet in hand.
“Mommy,” he said, “I don’t think I’m getting this right.”
I took the booklet and looked closely at the assembly of parts in his little hand. “It looks right to me, Bud,” I assured him.
He went back to work but within a few minuets he called out for me, a whiny edge to his voice. “I just can’t get this!” he complained.
I checked it again and again he had assembled it correctly.
“But it doesn’t look right!” he protested. “It doesn’t look like the ship in the picture.”
Looking down at the box, the assembly of parts in his hands, and then to his frowning face, I realized his problem.
I smiled down at his sad eyes. “You don’t have enough faith,” I told him in a gentle voice.
He looked up at me and giggled nervously. “What?” he asked. He was clearly surprised at what I had said.
“You don’t have enough faith,” I repeated. “You see what the ship is supposed to look like on the box and you can’t see how the pieces in your hand match up. You’re trusting your eyes more then the instructions.”
He glanced down at the booklet and then back at me, still confused. I knelt down beside him. Holing up the booklet I asked, “Do you believe that these instructions will show you the right way to make this ship?”
“Yes,” he said, puzzled.
“So you believe that if you follow all the steps in these books exactly right, from the beginning to the end, that at the end you will have a ship like the one pictured on the box?”
“Yes,” he said again, believing it this time.
“So why are you worried that the step you’re on doesn’t look right?”
His eyes widened and he giggled again, this time a happy giggle.
“Just do every step,” I encouraged. “Don’t worry that it doesn’t look right, just do it exactly like it shows in the booklet. Have faith that in the end you will have a ship.”
“Okay” he said, smiling; and he went back to work.
As I watched him, I couldn’t help but think about the many times in my life I have been like Jared, frustrated and doubting because the steps my life was taking did not look like the picture I had in my mind for my life. I remember being a young mother, loading my baby into the back of my car and driving away from everything I owned and every dream I ever had for my life. I remembered crying day after day in the temple and on my knees in prayer not knowing why my life had taken the direction it had. I couldn’t see then how those steps could ever take me to the happiness I wanted.
I remember a bishop calling me, an inexperienced and insecure single mother, into his office and asking me to teach the Relief Society class (the women’s sunday school) at church. I told him that I had no teaching experience and nothing to offer those eighty or so older women. He looked at me and said “Sister Scott, you love the Lord, and that is all that you need. He will do the rest.” I taught that class for two years; it was the beginning of many years of church service and teaching that has blessed my life in incalculable ways.
A few months later I became engaged to my husband. The eternal relationship I enjoy with him, and the family we have created together, has been the greatest blessing in my life.
I couldn’t see then what I see now. That all the steps, even the ones that didn’t make sense, even the ones that were painful, have brought me to this place; this place where my life is just like the one I always dreamed of. It is my picture on the box.
