Cutting. Shaping. Polishing.
You may not know this, but I’m pretty good at putting together tortured analogies.
So here goes …
This is how my first “pay-the-bills” job out of college, in a woodshop, prepared me to be an editor.
In the shop, I’d start with a rough cut of walnut, make the initial cuts, put the piece under a router, shape it, and then polish the final product.
Substitute “piece of wood” for “the first draft of a manuscript” and you should be able to get the parallel.
God does something similar with us:
Cutting. Shaping. Polishing. Repeat.
One famous writer captured this idea well …
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.
But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.
You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
When you’re in a healthy relationship with someone, that person always wants what is best for your soul.
There is a great deal of comfort, and some dread, in the knowledge that God knows exactly what our souls need …
”We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” ( C.S. Lewis )
Especially when,
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