I dislike the trendy phrase, “It is what it is.”
Therefore, I was delighted to come across Justin McRoberts’ book, It Is What You Make Of It: Creating Something Great from What You Have Been Given. The read is as good as the title.
The book’s premise reaffirms my dad’s strong belief. He often told me, “Things don’t always happen for the best. But how we respond to adversity defines who we are and what we believe.”
McRoberts takes this advice a step further. Address adverse events by using our God-given abilities to create anew.
The book begins with a litany of values: love, mercy, peace, forgiveness, healing. McRoberts claims that they don’t just happen. He says, “All of these essential aspect of human life requires the work of human hands…Hands of someone created in the image of God which includes the ability to be creative.”
Much of the book tells story after story of people who rose to the challenge of being God’s hands and feet here on earth.
My favorite part of his book are the two chapters which explain how two different high school teachers started him on his mission. Of course, I would identify with high school teachers.
As a freshman, McRoberts took the role of class clown to heart. In speech class while he was making jokes to those around him, Mr. Ross called him to the front of the room. The teen, thinking he was on his way to the principal’s office again, grabbed his book bag. But the teacher told him to put it down and take his place center stage. Then the man placed a larger-than-life inflatable cactus beside the youth. He was dumbfounded until a classmate yelled, “Pretend you are in a desert; it’s just a cactus.”
But the teacher responded, “No, It’s not just a cactus…It is what you make of it.”
That brief exchange became the seed for turning a teen-at-drift into an adult with purpose.
The second lesson came his senior year from the drama coach Tom Wills. The teacher entered the young man in a speech competition where the competitors recited monologues from Shakespeare. Technically, he placed second and he was proud of himself. Then, Wills went over the judge’s review sheet, with the young man. McRoberts actually had placed first, but the judges deducted three points from his score for clowning around before beginning his monologue.
As the author continues with the premise that people serve as God’s hands and feet on earth, he illustrates his position by relating a number of Biblical stories where Jesus included others, such as a the boy sharing his lunch with 5,000, into His work.
McRoberts says, “He (Jesus) could work miracles by himself. Just as Jesus does for you and me, he was drawing and inviting people around him into the story he was living.”
With a unique tale about a handmade foot bridge, McRoberts acknowledges that it is so much easier to tear down than to build up. He says, “I don’t know why we tear things down so often. I don’t know why we tear each other down. I don’t know why I so often undo good things in my life, in my relationships and in my soul.”
However, the author convinces the reader that God the creator made us in His image to be creative in solving the problems that we and our earth-mates often create. We all come with different talents, skills, interests, abilities, desires. According to him the secret of success is using these gifts to create good, not destroy it.
McRoberts always dreamed of being a singer/songwriter. He is, but God turned his dream inside out. Instead of being a stage performer only, God has used this man’s talent to nurture the talents of others. He’s a founding pastor and music director of Shelter Covenant Church in Concord, CA. In all that he does, McRoberts is making the most of IT, whatever IT is at the time. He invites us to do the same.
2021
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