Less-Than-Perfect

             Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (Colossians 3:12)

          I’ve just come upstairs from sanding seven pieces of wood that I’m going to turn into signs. A few days ago, I bought a sander and I watched a couple tutorials that gave me a couple of good tips. Yesterday, I sanded with the coarsest grit. Today, I touched up a few places with that, then used a medium grit and a fine grit paper. One of the things the tutorials taught me was not to press down on the sander. I’m supposed to let it do the work. Another is to sand with the grain.

Unfortunately, sanding isn’t about running the machine over each part of the surface for a certain amount of time and it’s guaranteed to be done. Some areas may not need much attention, but others may refuse to smooth even when you’ve been sanding them for “hours” (Well, thirty seconds.) At the Idea Lab, it can take as much as an hour to etch a sign. After it’s etched, I get to sand it with fine sand paper one last time, clean it up, then use tong oil on it. Each of three coats of tong oil is supposed to be allowed to sit for twenty-four hours. Two sides, that means six days. Then, they aren’t fully cured for as long as thirty days. Somewhere in there, there may also be some coats of polyurethane.

That’s not the only task that can be mentioned. I’m trying to soak down some soil so I can plant seeds. I have a week before I’m supposed to plant them. Once they’re planted, I have to keep the soil damp but not wet for a few days, a week, or as much as three weeks until the seeds germinate. After that, I get to care for them until it’s time to plant them outside. In many cases, that’s at least May 2. Once they’re planted outside, it will take three to six weeks for them to grow into “nice” plants, and longer before I can harvest. Let’s not forget repeated watering and weeding.

Then, there’s the bread that has to be kneaded and allowed to rise at least twice before it can be baked. And there are the plant parts that have to be dehydrated. And the book that has seen two of the probably 21 editorial passes, after which I’ll still find errors.

You may not do any of those things, but there are things in your life that teach humility because you never get them right, and that teach patience because they not only take time, but repeated times. Not only does it teach you how to take the time to get the results you want, but it also teaches you about God’s willingness to take the time needed to get the results in your life that He wants. Just as we learn to take something that’s less than perfect and make it-well, less less-than-perfect, so God willing to take us and make us less less-than-perfect.