One of the most amazing and majestic wonders on this earth are the great, “Grand Canyons”.
While I have never seen them in person, I have awed in wonder over the pictures that have displayed the beauty and grandeur and the stories of how they were formed. The Canyons are simply chasms that reach down into the deepest parts of the earth’s surface. Apart from the few trees and shrubs that are able to attach itself to the sides or walls inside the canyons and at the base of them, everything else is virtually lifeless.
Once where life was, is now a world of fossilized limestone and sandstone within its crusty cliffs. God used powerful forces to impact the canyons, with erosion from ice, water, volcano and winds, that all together contributed to the formation that is now the majestic wonder that it is.
Sometimes, God uses a similar force in our lives that runs like a curvy river that tries to push out of us pride, selfishness and other sin. There are times in our lives when we give our marriage vows a Judas kiss, and thoughtlessly slice another’s low self-esteem with a razor blade tongue.
Often times when we need to be a blessing to our enemy, or someone we think is unworthy of our compassion, we pass sludge’s of rocks and mud onto them, instead of the bread of kindness.
Even as a river carves out a mountain, our love or our lack of it, can create a river flowing with love and compassion, or a wedge that can prevent the loveliness of God in us to pass through reaching the places that are dry in our own lives as well as others.
In I Corinthians 13, Paul lays out the blueprint for the bridge that will transform our lives through love, into a majestic wonder if we will allow it to cut through the rock and sediment of wrong choices and waywardness against the One who created us and loves us the most.
Would you take a minute with me and close your eyes. In your mind roll back the tape of your life. Listen to the way that you talk. See the way that you appear not only to others, but to God through His eyes. How have you treated others, really treated them? Are you quick to get on Facebook and spew out revenge on someone that has hurt you by your own words? Are you really any better than they are in God’s eyes, not merely your own, by which of course is the standard that you are judging them with, and not Gods?
Have you been seeking the highest good you can find in others, or is it much easier to jump on the bad that you see in their lives? Are you bridging the gaping canyon in your own heart with love, or are you allowing it to further separate you from the will of God in your personal life?
A famous quote by William Shakespeare says this, “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.” Could this be true of you today sweet friend?
We are constantly feeling the pull from the stress caused by life’s daily problems to pull out which ever face we may need, to cover up what sin in us, is stirring up. But if we are in Christ, we must make every effort to neglect the desire that lingers at our door to treat others as sometimes they may be treating us.
Gen 4:7 tells us that “….But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it." It is possible and I am living proof that when I surrender my will to God’s will, I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength to do it.
The handy work of God is all around us. But, His crowning and greatest achievement, is in His creation and forming of you and me, and in the end, His finished product will be limited to how much we yield and surrender our lives to His will.
What are you holding back on today, by not allowing God to form in you that which needs to be formed?
Hold Fast,
-Bren
