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Limitations Are Life's Building Blocks

The architect Frank Gehry, well-known for designing the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, believes that constraints are the building blocks of great work. The strict standards for acoustics at Disney Hall led to a unique design of the interior space. And that, in turn, led to the soaring, graceful steel exterior that surrounds it. Gehry spoke of how lost he once felt when he was asked to design a house with zero constraints. "I had a horrible time with it," he said. "I had to look in the mirror a lot. Who am I? Why am I doing this? What is this all about?" It's better to have some problem to work on, Gehry explained. "I think we turn those constraints into action."

Gehry is saying, that constraints actually give us some building blocks to work with, a starting point. And without that, nothing happens. If you're ever tempted to feel limited by the constraints of your life, remember how few elements it takes to make something great. Every color in nature comes from just red, yellow, and blue together in millions of combinations. Every pop song, symphony, jingle, ditty, and aria in the Western World started with just twelve notes in the chromatic scale. Everything on the planet, including us, is made up of just 118 known chemical elements. And six regular eight-stud Lego bricks can be put together in more than 900,000,000 different ways. How's that for possibilities?

Possible Preaching Angles: God's Power; Help from God—This can also be used to illustrate the power of God. In other words, if human beings can find possibilities in limitations, how much more so is it true for the God of the Universe? How much more can God create possibilities out of our limitations?

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