Beautiful and Fuctional

I have often said that I have never had a real hobby.  That is not exactly true, I did take up golf for a five or six-year period.  I never got very good at it, but I enjoyed it.  But life got in the way as it often does and I let golf go by the wayside.

Now, twenty years later and retired, I have found a new hobby; writing, boating, and woodturning.  Okay, three new hobbies.  In this post, I want to focus on woodturning as my inspiration.

For those that don’t know what woodturning is, it is taking a piece of wood that doesn’t look like anything, often has splinters, and shows no immediate function.  So the woodturner takes a look at his selected piece of wood and sees something in it that, to date, no one else has seen.  While looking at the wood, feeling it, inspecting it for cracks and flaws, the woodturner starts to see the potential beauty in the piece.

After spending some time with the piece spinning at a high rate of speed on the wood lathe, the splintery stick starts to take shape.  The edges are smoothed out, a new shape is now apparent, and finally, the piece is sanded and polished.  But in this instance, it still has no purpose.

The maker of the piece affixes a shiny brass tip on one end and a shiny brass clip on the other end.  Now the piece is more beautiful than it could ever be on its own.  But it still has no function.  So, the maker of the piece inserts an ink cartridge down the center of the piece.  Only now is the piece beautiful and has purpose.  A wonderful device for writing that only the maker could see in that splintered piece of wood.

Kind of like us.  We have no discernable purpose in life, other than living life the way the world sees us.  Just a splintered piece of wood that would just a soon poke you in the finger as it would to help serve a need. 

But God sees something in each of us.  With all our rough edges and splinters, God sees the potential for something beautiful.  So, He begins to shape us and to smooth off some edges.  Sometimes He has to use a sharp tool to remove all the splinters and rough edges, and it always turns out for our good.  Finally, we are a beautifully shaped piece of work, but what is our purpose?

God has already thought of that.  He has already prepared our shiny brass tip and our shiny brass clip, and then the most important part, the ink cartridge is inserted right through the center.  He fills us with His Holy Spirit that comes bearing gifts and gives us purpose in His creation. 

Never underestimate what a woodturner can see in a splintered rough-edged piece of wood, and never underestimate what our Lord can see in us.

Beautiful and functional for His purpose.