I’ve been working on this table for my son, cutting, building, and finally placing a tile mosaic on top. It really has been a fun and rewarding experience, making something special for C. I started with a square, boring piece of wood, a length of trim, some (also square and boring) blue and white tiles, and lots of love. I measured, calculated, cut, stained, smashed, arranged, and affixed these things together and the end result promises to be beautiful.
I think it is like that with our lives, with God as the craftsman. He shapes us, cutting off pieces to create a more interesting and pleasing form, sands us to smooth our edges and make us less rough. He cuts and rearranges things, never leaving them the way we thought they should go, but fitting them together perfectly to fill the purpose he had for them. Just as I applied stain to the wood, our lives are stained with experiences and interactions.
It is a big change, a tough cut, a blemish at first, but what emerges in the end is a more beautiful and pleasing color, a deeper finish that proudly displays our grain, a smooth edge to greet the world with, a complete rim to hold our life together. Then, just when we think we’re looking pretty good, God shows us that He isn’t finished yet. Like my table- once I had the trim on and the legs finished, the stain done and the poly on, it was a functional table. It was more beautiful, it had purpose, it was equipped to do the job it was made for. But I wasn’t finished yet- for I had a more beautiful product in mind. I envisioned a more full potential, not just function, but beauty. And just as I took simple (but functional) square tiles and smashed them into pieces, we sometimes have to face things in our lives that feel like we’re being broken apart. For in the breaking, the beginnings of our future emerge. In enduring the shattered moments we begin to become what we are made for.
As I put the broken tiles together my vision began to emerge- a sailboat appeared, and it was more beautiful than even I imagined that I could make (this is my first mosaic- so my expectations weren’t too high of course). If we give God the broken pieces, if we continue to submit to His will, he will make something beautiful out of them- something far more beautiful that we could have even imagined. But even then the work isn’t done. For next I had to cover the sailboat in grout, smearing the tile with sticky, thick, mud-like grout. It looked awful for a while, messy and rough, but the grout filled the spaces between the pieces, set them together and bonded them to each other, provided a cohesion between them so that they would be more permanently fixed in their beautiful form.
Now I have to go clean the tiles, sponging them off and polishing them each so that their shiny surface can shine through and the beautiful sailboat will be visible once again. God keeps working on us, polishing the tiles of our lives, filling the cracks in our form, perfecting the image He has of us. And He has promised that He will bring the work He began in us to completion. I am sure that the wood I bought, the tiles I picked, the nails I chose didn’t expect to be cut, stained, smashed, or smeared. Had they known they would have probably fought me, begged to be left alone and “complete” as they thought they were. But because they were yielded to my hand, cut and refit, broken and rearranged, they are now something beautiful, something that I love and adore.
As I look at this table in the years ahead I will be filled with love for my son, I will remember the effort, and the thought, and the work that I put into it for him, and I hope that he enjoys the beauty of it. But I will also remember how much I am like that table with God as my craftsman. I will remember how broken I have felt and how shattered my heart has been, and I will praise God for the image He has for my future. It will be a reminder to continually yield to Him, for the end result promises to be more wonderful than I can even imagine.
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