God Perfects our Sharp Edges
The older we get, the less we can see and lift. Ask anyone over forty-five years old. Readers or bifocals become commonplace as we admit age steals sight and strength. Gravity assaults and changes physiques.
Yet regardless of age, we often need help seeing, working, or envisioning God-given beauty. Sometimes only others can enhance dimmed vision and reveal unseen details.
Clarification occurred on a recent visit to the Legacy House as a friend offered strength and time. Before working, she snapped a few pictures, and one photo displayed a wreath hanging from a rusty nail on the shed post. Handcrafted from barb wire encasing a dragonfly, the wreath dangled above dirt, grass, and discarded tin.
Someone designed the wreath with care and pride, taking time to twist the sharp edges into a homespun work of art. Now I see not only the wreath but craftsmanship, pride, and skill. The ways the commonplace become uncommon.
God is the master of taking the old and making it new. We are His creation and re-creation. He takes our worn-out barbed form, rusted with pride and sin, and reforms original beauty. With mercy and grace, His hands transform and mold us into new creatures preparing for new days.
He knew we would be messy, errant, and rebellious. After all, we’re the humans He created. Impatient, imperfect people living in physical brevity. Even in the shortest span of time, we create damage, commit atrocities, speak lies, and betray others. But God takes our sins and remembers them no more. He perfects our sharp edges and prepares us for eternity.
Our days are patterns of trying and failing and trying again. God also works in rhythms. He reshapes and forgives and renews.
Take a breath and pause. See beauty around and within. These are the moments enabling refocus on our God, our incomprehensible future, and His glory. These are the times recalling trials in our past, His transformative work, and His mercies.
These grace glimpses, before eyes dim and strength fades, provide warrior revivals of creative artistry. We build new realities when we learn hearts, minds, and souls become stronger, not weaker, as years stretch long. We increase in endurance, fortitude, and faith as bodies, bones, and joints diminish. We refresh spiritual strongholds of resilience while clinging to bedrocks of endurance as God’s power is perfected in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
God’s faithfulness and love guides our days and opens our eyes to see beauty in our past, present, and future. Sometimes, we see without help; other times, we need friends. But God is always with us - forgiving, renewing, and revealing as He waits for us to look, see, and act.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
-2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV)
