Marred

 

Our new friend, Joni Eareckson Tada, whom we met via video at our most recent Women’s Retreat, tells a story about a day she was wearing a favorite pair of earrings. While talking on the phone, she felt one fall off. When she backed up in her wheelchair, she couldn’t see it on the floor. But, when she wheeled into the hallway to find someone to help her find it, she felt a clunk-clunk, and realized she had run over it and it had become impaled on her tire. When her friend pulled it out, it was a mangled mess. I’ll let her finish the story:

I asked the jeweler, “Sir, could you please make the crumpled earring look like this nice one?”

He rubbed his chin and replied, “Lady, forget it. But I can make this one”—he pointed to the smooth earring—“look like your smashed one.”

It was an option I hadn’t considered. After a few minutes of hammering, I had a unique designer original: a pair of crinkled gold earrings that reflected even more light than before!

When God allows hammering and hurting, he is purposing to transform us into something new and different. Like those earrings, we are the same, yet poles apart. Best of all, we are better; we are closer to reflecting the light of Christ because of our weakness.

The jeweler at the mall could turn a flawless earring into a mangled one, but only God can take a mangled life and change it into a life that reflects the flawless perfection of his Son, Jesus Christ. One day the hammering process will cease and we will perfectly reflect the image of our Savior.

Someone has said, “God ruthlessly perfects whom he royally elects.” In what way have your hopes or dreams been smashed? Agree with God to hold on to his wisdom and grace through the hammering. It’ll be a change for the better. ¹

The hammering and the refining are always painful. But, God is making something of solid beauty, an original, for His glory. His servant Job said it this way:

“But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” —Job 23:10

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¹ from Tada, Joni Eareckson. Pearls of Great Price: 366 Daily Devotional Readings. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishers, 2006.