“Ouch! That hurts. Why are you gouging me with that sharp gadget? You know you’ve just about destroyed me. Not a lot of ‘me’ left.” Day 2, “Well, at least you’re only using that rough paper today. It hurts but not quite as painful as yesterday.” Day 3, “I still don’t understand why you did all that. I don’t look anything like I did.”
If wood could talk, I’ve often wondered if it might be saying something like this when I build a piece of furniture or lathe a bowl, or carve a picture in a cut of wood. My favorite wood is not something I buy at the woodcraft stores, but pieces I find in the woods or on someone’s stack of firewood—odd pieces of no use for anything else. I kept a half-rotten tree stump in my shop for over a year. Several times during the winter, I considered tossing it in the fireplace. However, I knew something beautiful lay inside; I just hadn’t visualized it yet. Then one morning, there it was, a beautiful and unique bowl buried beneath the rough ugly exterior. The rest was easy. I simply cut away everything not part of the bowl using various chisels, sandpaper, and polishing pads. I’ve often used this bowl as a teaching illustration demonstrating what God can do with sinful people perverted by the world. Now, it sits on a table at the entrance of my office next to several other carvings I fashioned from otherwise useless scraps of wood.
Each time I notice one of them; it reminds of how God takes people and shapes them into His works of art. The Lord created man in His image. He formed our inward parts and wove us in our mother’s womb. David wrote, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psa 139:13, 14). He also wrote why that image became corrupt. I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (Psa 51:5 NIV). From our parents, we inherit a sinful nature. Already with a depraved fleshly nature, we enter a sinful world. Unlike me needing to study a piece of wood and visualize a piece of art, He already sees the hidden beauty within every human being.
When we receive Christ, we become a new creation in Him with a new nature. However, God must remove our ugly, rotten, and corrupted old nature. We call this lifetime process, sanctification. At salvation, the Holy Spirit begins His work like a master artisan in his woodshop. We may scream out, “Ouch! That hurts,” wondering if God is trying to destroy us. Later, we will realize He was merely chiseling away part of our fleshly nature. With each gouge of His chisel, each rub of His sandpaper, and each stroke with the polishing pads, the new nature becomes stronger and brings us closer to the person He designed us to be.
The Holy Spirit’s tools include every challenging situation or abrasive person we encounter. He can use these as a means of chiseling and sanding us. Paul gives insight, And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son (Rom 8:28, 29). The word conformed means to shape or to fashion. Causing all things to work together for good, He chisels and sands away the old nature shaping the new nature into the person He created us to be in Christ.
My daughter reminded me last week of a lesson, I taught my children—‘sandpaper people’. God brings sandpaper people into our life for smoothing our rough edges. They annoy, exasperate, harass, and agitate us making life miserable. We typically run away and avoid them, but if God has placed them in our life as His sandpaper, He will bring someone else in their place. Often, we can’t avoid them because they are a relative, a co-worker, a neighbor, even someone at church. Then there is that one child, our own flesh and blood. He or she soon learns how to push all the right buttons until they rub us raw down to our last nerve. The reason sandpaper people annoy us so much, is they cause our ugly old nature to surface, and we do not like what we see. Usually, we blame the sandpaper—if they would change or go away. We come to realize they are not the problem. We are, and the sandpaper people are the Holy Spirit’s way of removing our rough edges.
Making furniture, lathing a bowl, and carving a picture requires chiseling, gouging, and sanding, which would be painful if wood possessed feelings and if it did on Day 4 it would say, “Now I see. I am a beautiful piece of artwork.” God process is similar for us and sometimes it hurts. Yet, He is fashioning us into the image of His Son. Our Day 4 will take place when we stand before God in heaven. Then we will give praise to the Lord because, “Now, we see.”
Sustaining Word for the Week: Let Him chisel, sand, and polish using your difficult situations and the sandpaper people He brings into your life. He is making you into something beautiful.