I heard Andy Stanley ask that
question recently and was surprised to realize that the word seems to have gone the
way of horse collars, blacksmiths or the Elizabethan ”thee and thou” of the
King James Bible.
I saw an
illustration on Face Book about the transition of coal to diamond. All it takes
is great pressure (which I’m sure the coal never voted for) and time—lots of time. I
remembered other images I heard of years
ago about allowing God to perfect, or purify, our lives, but somehow it never occurred to me that the process could be painful.
Matthew 3:12 describes God
sifting out what is not good and useful to Him. “His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear his threshing
floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but He will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire." That doesn’t sound like gentle handling, but it's not optional in His view--
it's necessary. (I don't want to be considered chaff!)
And take clay for instance.
I had in mind the image of nice, cool clay, gently caressed and coaxed into shape, but no. First the Potter slaps it onto a wheel and twirls it and twists it and shapes
it into the form He desires and then to make sure the change He created is
fixed, He puts it into the fire. Ouch! The result is something useful, often a
thing of beauty.
A sword is traditionally a
necessary or lifesaving tool for a Warrior, as is a knife to a Hunter. Base material is
alternately softened by fire and shaped with hammer and anvil to temper the metal, make it strong. The result is an
effective, dependable tool He can trust.
A Gardener carefully
separates and destroys weeds from His crops. He places a
protective fence and guards His cultivated garden from birds or animals,
thieves who come to steal or destroy.
Most cities have museums or
parks with beautiful sculptures honoring someone whose memory is respected by figures in stone, shaped by an Artist
from rough, jagged, muddy stone dug from the ground and transformed into His vision of beauty, not gently changed, but with hammer and chisel.
Deep within the earth’s surface, mixed with common soil and gravel, A miner finds gold, powder or tiny bits, not all that attractive, but He knoss how to purify it. You guessed it: after washing the mixture to separate the impurities, He uses fire to refine the yellow matter into something beautiful.
One thing all these products
have in common is that their destiny is in the hands of their Creator and
discomfort or pain is usually involved to create something of great value. Why
should we not expect some discomfort--or sadness--in our lives? We can trust our
Creator and allow Him to form us into the image of His Son, ridding us of our
blemishes and brokenness, revealing our true nature as children of our King.
THE SUN
Fire melts butter, so they say;
Why does the sun then harden clay?
Now the question comes into play,
Does the sun pity butter, or hate the clay?
Does it bestow its heat upon a whim,
Or is the difference in the two of them?
What mystery is held in the sun's kiss?
I suspect the truth is merely this:
Clay resists the Son's presence,
While butter yields its essence;
O Lord, create in me, I pray,
A heart of butter, not of clay.
