Parts Unknown

1983 was not just a Jemi Hendrix song; it was also a year of our Lord that began on a Saturday. President Reagan called it the ‘Year of the Bible.’ It was the year Carrie Underwood the singer, was born and the year that Bear Bryant the football coach died.

It’s the year we said hello to the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday and the year we said goodbye to the De Lorean motor company.

At the same time McDonalds was bringing us the Chicken McNugget we waved goodbye to NASA’s Pioneer Ten as it left our solar system for parts unknown

Parts is Parts

Now the Brewer worked at McDonalds in 1983. I cooked and cleaned underneath a giant Afro that was crammed under a McDonalds hat. I was sixteen years old spending my long days at Joshua High and my long nights working for the vision of Ray Kroc. It was a good place for me to work and my first real job outside of working on farms.

Every time we would fry up a new batch of chicken nuggets we would throw them out of the deep fryer while proudly proclaiming, “parts is parts.” I don’t know if you remember it or not, but Wendy’s came out with a commercial that year causing people to question the ingredients of our beloved pieces of bird.

It went something like this:

Announcer: Those nibits some hamburger places serve are actually processed chicken

Customer in line: Excuse me sir what is that meal I saw there?

McDonald employee: Chicken.

Customer: What’s Processed chicken?

McDonald's employee: Yeah that’s like when they take a lot of chicken and assemble their respected parts.

Customer: What parts?

McDonald's employee: “Different parts. Parts is parts”

Unknown Parts

Its not just fast food that has parts unknown. There are lots of things you can look at and not tell what it’s made of. A woman’s heart for example; now theirs there’s an unsearchable place! Geographically speaking I have been to places in Africa and in India that have yet to appear on a map. One time me and some friends of mine rented a river boat in Costa Rica and went to a village way out in the middle of nowhere for a food outreach. I don’t necessarily recoil at parts unknown; it’s just how God made me.

Parts is not parts when it comes to the map of our daily lives. We love the roads we have often traveled. We find security in things most familiar. It’s those unknown parts that we reject and try to steer away from because we don’t know how we will handle those places. We are not sure if we can hold ourselves together in parts unknown.

I find myself in places all the time where I’m not sure how to map it out. Spiritual places, emotional places, relational places. Places I don’t really want to be at in this stage of my life and places I’ve never been before. Parts unknown.

There is a verse from the Bible I hang on to reserved for unknown areas. It’s a promise from the Lord himself that offers me security when treading through those vulnerable places past the familiar and common.

“…and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Matthew 28:20

Jesus said this Himself and it’s the promise of His very presence. The newer translations say the ‘end of the age.’ So the promise is that if you are at the end of a season in your life or the end of an era or the end of your mapped out territory even at the end of your rope, what ever your problem is, it wont be that you are alone. Jesus is there and He’s hoping you will look for Him.

Contact The Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com