That's how I feel when people interrupt my schedule, take up my time, frustrate me, irritate me, rub me the wrong way, and otherwise ruffle my feathers.If it just weren't for people in my life, I would be so happy in my private comfort zone.
"What? Lord, did You say You are the One who sends PEOPLE into my life to MAKE me holy? That sounds far-fetched to me. You say that I'd just stay a diamond in the rough were it not for the abrasiveness of human relationships to make me into a precious gem to shine for You? Please explain that to me, Lord....
(A Personified Selection from Leona Choy's unpublished-yet book, GOTHIC ARCHIE AND OTHER IMMAGINEERINGS: Fables of God's Kingdom for Grown-Ups.)
The Interpersonal Relationship of Clods
We clods lay ignored in a huddled heap in our wooden
crate on the back porch for so long that we lost track of time.
The Man found us scattered
in gullies and crevices on the mountain and brought us to this
Unknown Place. At least Out There we could
breathe. Here we were smashed one clump against another, quite homogenized
globs of dirt, undistinguishable from each other.
“What do you plan to do with those
muddy clods?” a curious voice asked.
“I’m going to turn each one into
the likes of these,” The Man answered. We shoved at each other
trying to see through the slats of the crate.
The Man displayed to his
friend a splendid collection of highly polished stones that sparkled
like diamonds.
Our hopes soared! We fairly trembled
with anticipation to think that each of us would quickly be lifted out of our
anonymity and transformed one by one through some instant miracle into costly gems.
“Come along and I’ll show you how
it’s done,” invited The Man.
He dragged our crate out of the
shadows. But instead of picking us out one by one for a magical transformation, as we expected, He
dumped all of us misshapen, mud-caked clods into a huge steel drum.
Oh! How it hurt to be treated so
ignominiously! The jagged edges of each clod hit and scraped
against each other! Scarcely had we rolled over trying to
get more comfortable, than steaming streams of hot water began to squirt over
us. The Man shook an abrasive powder all over us, dribbled oil on the whole
mess, then slammed the door and locked it. We were terrified in the
utter darkness.
The Man flipped a motor switch and the
steel drum began to rotate unmercifully fast. Scraping, grinding,
banging, crashing, clod against clod we tumbled! How could we endure such deafening noise and pain and our forced contact with
one another. Continual spinning, friction, jabbing,
crushing, knocking. How long? How long?
“It takes time,” remarked The Man
as He walked away with his friend while our pummeling went on and on...and on.
Much, much later He returned and
flipped the switch off. The drum came to a squeaking halt. We were
unceremoniously dumped out into a trough outdoors, nearly blinded by
the sunlight. The Man turned a powerful spurt of hot water on us from
a hose. Dirt poured away in a murky stream.Would our ordeal never end?
“Beautiful! Marvelous! Exquisite!”
exclaimed The Man’s friend.
Breathless and dazed, we lay there
stunned until we realized that he was talking about us. We looked at
each other and gasped with disbelief. Each was different from the
other—sparkling, brilliant and clean! We had been transformed from
earthy clods to gems!
The Man lifted one of us in His palm.
“Look,” He spoke with delight. “I can see My reflection on the
surface of this one!”
He explained to His friend, “I can't
polish one clod by itself to this perfection. It takes the friction of many clods against
each other, together with Oil, abrasive, time, and lots of hot water to get this
marvelous result.”
******
From THE RESOURCE BOOK
1 John 3:2
“Beloved, now are we children of God,
and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when
He appears,
we shall be like Him,
because we shall see Him just as He is.”
we shall be like Him,
because we shall see Him just as He is.”
No comments:
Post a Comment