Designed With a Purpose

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever! Amen (Romans 1:18-25).

In case you didn’t hear about or live through it, mid-January saw the American Deep South experience a week of Icemageddon or Snowmageddon, depending on where you live. At my house, it was the ice version.

For those who live in the northern reaches of America, some amounts of ice and snow are generally expected for this time of year. But for us in the South, the only thing that is “expected” with our weather is that it is somewhat (read very) unpredictable! We have had snow in March and worn shorts at Christmas, so most of us (including the transportation departments) don’t have the equipment for handling snow or ice on the roads or the ground. Hence, about four days into our icy “staycation,” we saw a bulldozer scraping a nearby road. This unconventional method was not a snowplow, but it worked.

This same is true for the toys we use for playing in the snow/ice. While some folks down here might purchase sleds on the off chance they will get to use them every few years, my family has never done that. Therefore, we make do with what we have. In March of 2015, our makeshift sleds were the plastic lid from a large storage bin and an old baby bed mattress. On that occasion, my husband said, “There is nothing more inventive than snow and rednecks.”

In 2024, the first thing my crew tried was an extra-large frisbee, which held up for only a couple of hours before it shattered. After that, I raided my bakeware drawer, the results of which are pictured below/above. These pans accommodated all categories of riders, from my 35-year-old son holding his 2-year-old daughter to a few teenagers, with a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old thrown in too! The pans worked very well on the ice.

However, as you can see from the picture, these pans are no longer functional for baking. While they made decent substitutes for real sleds, that was not what they were designed for, and they did not fare well when used outside of their intended purpose. Maybe I could have found a tinsmith to repair them … but I was not interested in going to that kind of trouble or expense. I just replaced them with new ones – probably for less than the price of shipping to have them repaired.

And do you know what would have been cheaper than that? To have not misused them in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong. My children and grands had a wonderful time using those pans outside of their intended purpose. (I think in the prescription drug industry, it’s called “off-label” use.) It was well worth the price of replacing them to see and hear those kids sliding down our driveway and yard. Their squeals of delight were pure joy!

But those were very momentary pleasures since our high temperatures were mostly in the teens and twenties that week. Mississippians are not accustomed to that kind of cold, and we often don’t realize how extreme it is until it is too late. Therefore, the fun the little ones had was accompanied by intense pain when they came inside, and their hands began to thaw. They were pitiful, and it was difficult to watch.

Do you know something else that is often used outside of its Creator’s design? Human sexuality. And the accompanying turmoil that ensues from misusing God’s beautiful gift brings a whole lot of pain with it as well. Humans sometimes experience anxiety, depression, sexual confusion, and all sorts of mental or physical ailments without ever giving credit to the source – misusing or abusing something God created to be holy and sacred. The same holds true whether people are involved willfully, or if they are, themselves, being misused or abused sexually.

Here is a news flash: Any time humans determine to operate in a way other than that which the Creator designed for us, as noted in His instruction manual (the Bible), we wind up in a mess! Satan is always trying to pervert what God calls good, holy, or sacred, and that includes sex. God designed this beautiful thing, the sexual relationship, as a way for a husband and wife to be uniquely joined together. Genesis 2:24 says: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The husband-wife relationship is a picture of Christ and His church, so it is intended to be a sacred union … a lifetime commitment … a mutual agreement between two people indicating that the greatest human-to-human intimacy is worth a lifetime spent together. Of course, the physical aspect is not the only treasure that results from marriage – not even close! But God values this gift so highly that he sanctions it only within the confines of marriage.

While the physical union is only one element, it is still an important piece of the puzzle called marriage. Like a puzzle piece that is turned the wrong way or set in the wrong location, sex outside of its rightful place or used in the wrong way will never complete God’s picture. And because it was created as one piece of the marriage puzzle, sex can never be a complete picture on its own, either.

God did not create sex to be treated cavalierly in relationships, and He did not create it as a commodity to be sold for entertainment – not for money or anything else. He did not intend for it to be presented in print, on the screen, on the airwaves, in casual conversation, or anywhere else besides within the confines of biblical marriage. Sex as a commodity is another of Satan’s distortions of God’s gift.

But the value of any commodity is determined by the price someone is willing to pay … and sex sells; it sells in print, film, TV, stage, music … and on street corners, dark rooms, clubs, and even family homes. Sadly, there is ample evidence of the use of sex in all these avenues, and the following is an example of how this sex-as-a-commodity attitude is reflected in our culture. Here are a few of the lyrics to a song called “One-Night Standards,” which was nominated for Song of the Year and Single of the Year for the 55^th CMA Awards in 2021. When I heard it, my heart was broken for those who live this way.

It's just a room key

You ain't gotta lie to me

Can't you just use me like I'm using you?

How it goes is, bar closes

There's no king bed covered in roses

Just a room without a view

No, I don't want a number you ain't gonna answer

Let's just stick to the one-night standards.

“One-Night Standards” – that’s a catchy title, but it’s an incredibly sad and destructive way to live.

Oh, and one final note on this …

While I was unwilling to repair my warped and unusable pans, God has already paid the price for repairing lives that have been broken and shattered – no matter what form that takes, no matter how it happened, and no matter whether it was by the choice of a predator or the choice of the one who is broken. Jesus made this possible for all who will receive Him.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-7).