Skip to main content

He Who Began

  In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 1:4-6)

 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. (Jeremiah 18:4)

 As a crafter, I learned that when I’m in the middle of a craft project, I often go through what I call the “Yuck Phase.” Whatever I’m making is too hard. I’ve made too many mistakes. It’s just not working. It and I are failures! I feel a bit like that today, but the failure isn’t a craft project. It’s my life, and it’s partly the time of year.

Before Christmas, one of my neighbors hung a picture that his wife had painted of the manger scene. He mentioned to me that she spent fifteen hours working on a painting that was maybe 18X24 inches. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more than fifteen hours working on my two wall hangings that aren’t done yet. I’ve seen paint in fast forward. They add colors that make no sense and seem to go over the same places over and over again. A lot of that is part of doing art, but I suspect there’s Yuck Phase involved.

A friend shared the “He who began a good work” verse this morning, and it’s a timely reminder. We are God’s craft projects. He’s a master craftsman and He doesn’t make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that the thing He is making doesn’t go through phases of imperfection that are a necessary part of becoming a masterpiece. It took 16 years for the canvas and paint to become Mona Lisa. At some point, she didn’t have eyes or that smile.

We like to think that by the time we’re 18 or 21, the masterpiece is complete. We’re all grown up, after all. As we get older, we figure out that age 18 or 21 is just the beginning. I’m coming up on a big number for my birthday, a new decade, and I’m not only trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m wondering how I made it through life knowing, being, and doing less than I do now.

I’m definitely in what I’d call a Yuck Phase for my life. But they are necessary and natural. The thing we need to remember is that we aren’t the artist. He knows what He’s doing, and if we don’t have eyes to see, or if our mouths are a bit misshapen and ugly at the moment, it’s not our destiny, it’s a phase. If He takes more than 15 minutes, or 16 years to make all of the stuff that doesn’t make sense come together as a masterpiece, He knows what He’s doing. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more