Thoughts on a Rubiks Cube

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
-- James 2: 8-11

The other day my dad and I went to an Indaianapolis Indians baseball game. It was
Rubiks Cube night. The first umpteen-thousand people got a Cube. We sat down and I looked at the Cube, thinking about how much I didn't want to start spinning it because I'd never get it back together again. I've never been able to fix the Rubiks Cube once its been screwed up, so I left it in its shrink wrapped state.

A few minutes later a man and his little boy were climbing the stairs to get a hotdog or something and the little kid, probably no more than four or five, was walking carefully up the stairs and trying to solve the Cube. I chuckled as he walked by and his dad said "I told him not mess with it."

I didn't think anything of it until last night.

I must admit, here, that I have been remiss. I haven't taken time for personal Bible study in weeks. Absolute weeks. Sure, I'll even give you the usual excuses, ready? I've been too busy: work, school, sleeping and eating. I just couldn't fit it in. A day or two ago, it hit me that I hadn't had any personal one on one God-time in awhile, aside from Sunday mornings. So, before I went to bed I read a little bit of the book of James. I read James when I need a pickmeup, if you will. There is alot in there that really "speaks" to me.

I read the verses above last night and had a mini-epiphany. The Law is like a Rubiks Cube. In one way we do our best to keep it. We try and say "I follow the Ten Commandments to the letter..." etc, etc. And yet, somehow or another we fall. We each have our, as Paul called them, "thorns." There is that one thing that gets us, time and time again-- a part of the Cube is messed up. So, we try and fix that Cube and what happens... we mess it up worse.

I remember when I was a kid and the Rubiks Cube was the hottest toy on the planet, save for the Gabbage Patch Doll; there were competitions to see who could fix the Cube the fastest. I was amazed at the speed and agility those people had. Amazing.

This Rubiks Cube website has a neat fixture on it: there is a "solve" function. After you scramble that cube up and work on it for a few minutes trying to put it back together again, you can just give up, click "solve" and boom... the cube solves itself... isn't that kind of what Grace does? Isn't that kind of what Grace is all about? After we've mucked up God's great "cube," if you will we can be confident that through Jesus Christ that "cube" is solved and made perfect. We don't have to worry about the discombobulated cube.

Thinking back to that little boy's dad who said to me "I told him not to mess with it" I find myself wondering does God think that, too? I told them not to mess with it." Then His Son says: "It's okay, dad, I fixed it." And our Cube is solved.

Perfect-- just like us through Grace.