One day Shane and Shelly were exploring the woods on the hill behind their town. They are twins who had just turned ten years old. They had never climbed the hill behind the town, in fact, none of their friends had ever climbed that hill! People told stories about how there was a weird hermit that lived up on the hill and who did all kinds of strange things to people that climbed the hill and bothered him. Shane and Shelly were curious, they were more curious than afraid, so on this sunny Saturday afternoon they decided to climb the hill carefully and very quietly to see what was really up there.
The woods were so thick that they couldn’t see very far in front of them at all, and they couldn’t keep from making a lot of noise as sticks cracked and broke with every step they took, Also, the bugs and mosquitoes were so thick they could hardly breathe without swallowing some of them. Just when they thought that they couldn’t stand to go on any further, they saw brighter sunshine in front of them. They came to the edge of a big clearing, with a house in the middle of it. The house didn’t look like any house that they had ever seen before! The house was made out of three school buses that were welded together to make one long house! It was painted an red-orange color, and of course it had three doors (one in each bus part) and lots of windows on every side! The top of the buses had antennae’s and wires all over it, and there were six sets of wings attached to the side of the buses.
Just as the children were looking at the strange house, a motor suddenly roared to life! The house began moving across the clearing, going faster and faster and then it happened! The house ran into a big tree at the edge of the clearing and stopped with a tremendous crashing noise! Two things happened at the same time, the tree cracked and fell with a crash, and the front door of the house flew open and a strange man came flying out of the door on a bicycle. The man had a parachute strapped to his back, and he pulled the rip cord to open the parachute! The man on the bicycle was coming straight toward Shane and Shelly! They were so scared that they couldn’t even get out of the way! Just before the bicycle ran over Shane and Shelly, the parachute tangled on the antennae on the roof of the bus, and the man was jerked off the bicycle and fell flat on the ground. The bicycle crashed into the buses right beside Shane and Shelly!
The man jumped to his feet and said, “Ooops!” Then he went and picked up the bicycle, and it was the strangest bicycle that Shane and Shelly had ever seen! It had three seats, three handlebars, and three sets of pedals! Also it had a strange-looking box mounted in the frame. The box had lots of blinking lights and a crank on the side of it.
Shelly asked the man, “Why did you just drive your house into that tree?”
The man replied, “My house wasn’t supposed to run into that tree, it was supposed to fly! Something went ooops! They call me Professor Ooops because I invent all kinds of things, but nothing seems to work right, so I am always saying Ooops!”
Shane asked, “Why do you have such a strange-looking bicycle?”
Professor Ooops said, “This isn’t just an ordinary bicycle, this is supposed to be a time-traveling machine! I think it will travel through time if you turn the crank on the box, but I don’t know where it will take you, or how to get back! It’s just another Ooops! Sometimes I wonder why God made me like this. I can’t do anything right! I wish I was someone else. That’s why I live up here by myself. It’s not safe for me to be around other people because I’m always making an Ooops!”
Shelly wanted to comfort Professor Ooops, so she said, “Maybe your time-traveling bicycle will work.” Before anyone could stop her, she turned the crank on the side of the box that was mounted on the bicycle’s frame, and….nothing happened!
The Professor said sadly, “It’s just another Ooops”
Application
Have you ever felt like a total failure, like you are not good at anything?
Have you ever wished that you were someone else?
I may surprise you, but most people feel like that some of the time. You are not alone!
God does not see you as a failure. You are a special unique person that He made. You are not an accident! You are hand-made by God and He has a purpose for you! You are not worthless! You are worth so much to God that He sent his son Jesus to pay the price for all the things that you have ever done wrong, He did this by dying on the cross for the sins of the world.
Psalms 139:13-18 (chapter 139, verses 13-18) in the Bible tells how special God made you!
“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous – how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!”