Today’s Scripture Reading (August 2, 2017): Isaiah
59
One of the saddest things for me
is to sit with someone that knows that they need to change the direction of
their lives, but they lack the courage to do it.
In Ephesians, Paul says that we are created to be God’s masterpiece. Most of us
wake up in the morning, and when we finally get around to looking in the
mirror, well, we don’t see the masterpiece. We see something else. We keep looking
for the masterpiece – but it is just not there.
So we just keep on keeping on. We
take one step – and then another. And we make do with who we are – and we try to forget about who we want to be. At
some point, we just give up on the dreams we
have and we … settle. Settle is such an
ugly word.
Can I change me? No. Left
to my own desires and devices, I will always be the same as I am now … or worse. It is kind of like
sitting in a little red wagon on the side of a steep hill. And we know that
once the wheels on the wagon start to roll, we only have two choices left to
us - we either go downhill or we can wreck, and sometimes we do both.
God created me (and you) as his
masterpiece. And maybe some kid has come up to us with a ball point pen and
scribbled all over us – and maybe that hides the masterpiece that we were
created to be, but the masterpiece is still there under all the extra ink.
What we need is not for us to
decide to change, but rather God to come and restore. What we need is not the
courage to do the work ourselves, but rather the faith to let the one that
created the Masterpiece that is us – recreate it again. In the words of Isaiah,
his arms are not too short, and neither are his ears to dull
for the job of restoration that is at hand. But he will wait until we give him
permission to work in us.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 60
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