I think the Lord has me in the classroom once again. This is always both exhilarating and terrifying. It is exhilarating because I deeply want to be shaped into the image of the most high God. It is terrifying because God usually has to use refining fire to burn away more for who I am and that is always painful.
My college career has by no means been exemplary. It has been fraught with failure, pain, and humiliation. I have been cursed with the blessing of being humbled early in my life. The Lord has apparently decided that I cannot be slowly molded and shaped into his image. I feel like he decided to make me a bronze something or other out of me. He melted me all the way down all at once, and now I feel like the heat is finally diminishing and I am being allowed to cool and solidify in His image. His refining fire has charred me some (and still continues to do so) but nothing that the Master Artisan's hand cannot polish out.
The process of being cast has been more difficult than I can possibly put into words. Everything I was before I was melted down into a pile of mush and stirred and even scraped. He took all of the raw material that I was and completely destroyed the shape that formerly represented those materials. He then refined and tempered the metal before pouring it into a completely new and beautiful mold. He took what little was usable from my own scanty work and reforged it with Himself as the prime ingredient of the new metal. He also carefully designed and shaped the molding that I would cool in. The shape will ultimately be His Son's face imperfect because of the metal mixed with His heavenly steel but beautiful in it's representation of Christ. One of these days (probably many years down the line) He will step back from the solid, well polished piece he has created and find satisfaction in his own work by calling me His "good and faithful servant."
The most amazing part of the whole situation is that I am His workmanship. I don't have to come up with grand designs for what I should look like, He already has that figured out. I merely have cope with fire and polishing and revel in seeing his masterpiece revealed day-by-day. I am so very weak and unimaginative that the casting I do is boring and pathetic. However, I am blessed to be in the hands of the Master of all master artisans. I know that whatever He chooses to work into his representation of His Son will only make the end product that much more beautiful (regardless of the pain in the midst of the work). I think I begin to understand Paul's joy in suffering and tribulation. He knew that each pain and trail brought a new sheen of clarity to the workmanship of God, and that was cause for joy.
Fires and polishing are hard to bear, but I know that my God is shaping a masterpiece that will shine with His glory and I am so blessed to be a part of that process.
