Shaping Up
Do you ever feel frustrated that life is just hard. I mean you take a beating and catch your breath just in time for the next pounding. You feel like you like the way your life is looking, then it is smashed and pounded flat only to be reshaped.
The blacksmith’s hammer pounds and pounds against the metal, then thrust into the fire and pound and pound some more. That is how metal is formed into something useful. The clay is turned and pounded, watered, turned and pounded and pounded and turned only then is it ready to be shaped, but the shape is often shaped, crushed and reshaped to achieve the final piece. My conclusion . . . that’s how useful things get made.
Stop worrying about it so much. It is not sitting in the bucket of raw materials that makes you worth something, nor is it sitting around on display. But it is the pounding and shaping of life that forms you into a great work of art or useful tool. And it is the application that proves your value. Be encouraged today, even though you are getting pounded, the heat is on and you sense the shape of things are changing – you are being shaped in the Master’s hands!
Isaiah 64:8 “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
Genesis 2:7 “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
