MacGyver, the dog, the bone, the reflection, and the Christian life

My pastor once spoke of “MacGyver” Christianity: Everything you need you already have (see I Corinthians 1 and 3:21-22).

This is the message we need to keep hearing again and again, from our earliest days of faith.

I was reminded of this recently, as read an excerpt from a book by the recently retired Concordia St. Paul (where I work) prof. Thomas Trapp:

“There is a fable about a little dog that found a bone and picked it up with its mouth to take it back home.  While crossing a little bridge, it happened to glance over the edge.  Seeing a bone in the water – the reflection of the one in its own mouth – it tried to snap that one up so as to have two and lost the one it had.  That is how sin works.  To sin is to try and control or to attempt to get what is promised and has been given already.  The motivation to love comes from being reminded of what God was providing already.  Forget the Giver and one has to provide for oneself!  Then everyone else becomes an enemy.  God told Israel that He would help them.  But those who tried to make their own way through life independently would see everything come apart.” (Scripture and Life, 1997, page 20)

Things come apart.  But in Christ, all is held together.  And of course, we don’t find our Lord as the dog found the bone, but He comes to us again and again – even placing Himself into our mouths.  And again – with Him, everything we need, we already have –  in “embryonic form” or otherwise.

Images found at Wikipedia: MacGyver article and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dog_and_its_Reflection

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