A pair of my son’s pants lies draped across a sewing machine in my bedroom – a testimonial to my thorough aversion to reading instruction manuals. The pants are calling to me, “Hem me … hem me.” “Hem yourself,” I snort back. It’s a standoff.
The new sewing machine was a Christmas present. Our old, prehistoric machine finally bit the proverbial dust (and good riddance, I say!), so I told my husband that I really should get a new one. I mean, everyone should have a sewing machine … right? … just in case … even if one doesn’t know what to do with it.
I had to take sewing class for six terrible weeks in the 7th grade. My teacher was a very cranky old spinster (is it still legal to use that word?). Our big final assignment was to sew hats from a pattern that might as well have been a blueprint for a nuclear power plant. I muddled through the assignment, getting a C-minus and a note from my teacher explaining that she only gave me a passing grade because I tried so doggone hard. I never wore the hat.
My attempts at sewing have not been happy or fruitful, to say the least. It was hard to even want a sewing machine in my house.
Learning to use this new machine will require me to do another of my least favorite things: reading instruction manuals. Most instruction manuals are now printed in two or three languages, so you’d think I could find ONE language that makes sense to me. But I can’t. My brain turns to mush. My neurons cease firing.
I thumbed through the manual for my new sewing machine and felt my brain beginning to cramp, so I quickly abandoned the effort and ate some Oreos.
So, there the machine sits on the floor of my bedroom with my son’s pants draped over it. My engineer husband will have to read the manual and show me how to do the few basic things I might ever need to do on it. And the whole time I will be resentfully pondering how much easier it would be to simply drop my sewing off with someone who knows what they are doing.
One should know one’s limitations, and in this case, I do. I just have a hard, hard time making sense out of complicated written directions, especially when I don’t really want to learn how to understand it anyway. But there is one notable exception to my handicap. There IS one owner’s manual I love to read, and with some divine help, it even makes sense. It’s the Bible – God’s instruction manual for my life.
Maybe it’s because God wisely disguised His instructions by wrapping them up in a love letter. I could read love letters all day long and never grow tired of them, and that’s what the Bible is to me. It’s an action-packed, edge-of-your-seat thriller, too. And the Bible even has some humor in it (did you think “Shrek” was the first story that included a wise-cracking, talking donkey? Check out the Old Testament story of Balaam in Numbers 22.).
But the best part is that God’s Word is just that … God’s word. It’s true. It works. I can build my life on it. I can glean wisdom, direction, understanding and hope from its pages. It won’t tell me how to hem those pants, but it will help me do the things in life that really matter.
As if the new sewing machine isn’t bad enough, I have a new cell phone, too. And it came with a big fat instruction manual. I finally figured out how to make calls, check my voice mail and enter a few speed dial numbers. I think the phone is capable of doing just about everything but waxing my car, but I guess I’ll never know. Not if it means I have to read that manual.