Nuts and Bolts

The past 17 days of my life have been memorable.

For some reason, I decided to tackle the highly-feared, often-cursed Comp. II at Northwestern College in a two-week long summer version of the course. My intent was to avoid a summer of drudgery and constant procrastination by getting the paper researched and written in two weeks. So, I said "Goodbye" to my social life, and headed for the library.

In the first five days of class, I found myself flipping through stacks of books, scrolling through articles on the internet, and scratching my head while trying to find rather specific research in the field of youth ministry. At the end of that first week, I had spent more hours in the library than in my first two years of college combined. After that was one more week of proof-reading, revising, re-writing, and more head scratching. Upon completion of the course, the last thing I imagined myself doing was reading another book.

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Tuesday morning I sat in the warm Minnesota sun, frying my epidermis, and read a book: The World as I remember It: Through the Eyes of a Ragamuffin. This is a compilation of writings from one of the greatest song writers in the 20th century, Rich Mullins. In a few all-too-short hours, I read this short book cover-to-cover and saw the beauty that was created by one of God's chosen sons.

The pages of this book are not filled with lyrics from Mullins' songs, but rather, the articles he wrote for a column in Reasons from 1991-1996. Merely mentioning the name Rich Mullins evokes fond memories for me.

Just months before he passed away on September 19, 1997, I had the opportunity to sit at his feet while he hammered away on the dulcimer. At the time, my elementary ears didn't realize the beauty that was being portrayed before me, but today, I am beginning to understand the significance of that moment.

While I haven't listened to Rich's music for almost a month, his writing has been stirred something inside me. Like a washing machine on spin cycle, my heart was caught in the momentum of Mullins' wordsmithery. It was in the first few pages of the book that Rich's smoothly shaped phrases slid right into a rough and ragged spot in my heart.

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"I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people who were willing to be nuts and bolts, who through their explanation of it, held it together so that I could experience it and be compelled by it to obey."

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No more than two hours after reading this, my phone rang. On the other end was a good friend of mine calling to see what I was up to for lunch. While my molars made my cheeseburger mush, me and Mr. Erickson decided to get together. Minutes later, Jeremy showed up, we laughed a lot, and he became the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me.

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Wherever life has you today, ask God to open up doors for you to be the nuts and bolts for someone else. When you need to, explain clearly why you are loving unconditionally, kindly correcting, or providing for physical needs. Be the hands of Christ, working in the world.

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Tighten the bolts of belief that are necessary to bring people back to Jesus.

Loosen the torque the nuts of legalism have on members of the family bound by the law and let the live in the freedom of God's grace.