By Rae Lynn DeAngelis
Before Jesus started His public ministry, He was a carpenter. Since most structures in biblical times were hewn from rock, many believe our Lord’s carpentry skills included stone masonry.
While our home was being built several years ago, I watched a stonemason working diligently on what was to become the front of our house. He separated each rock, piece by piece, and evaluated each stones potential in the formation of our home. If a stone wasn’t quite right, he took his tools and carefully chipped away bit by bit until the fragment remaining was the perfect size and shape for the predetermined space. The broken pieces were not discarded; rather they were incorporated elsewhere in the design of our home.
Like the stonemason, God carefully chips away at our lives, smoothing and shaping us for His plan and purpose. Sometimes in the sculpting process, sections of our lives must be broken away in order for us to be used according to God’s design. Yet, like the broken fragments in the building of our home, the severed portions are never wasted. God incorporates them elsewhere in His majestic formation.
“The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in the form of man, of man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a shrine” (Isaiah 44:13).
“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
We may not fully understand God’s plan right now, but one day it will be clear. Until then, we must continually surrender our lives into the hands of the skilled Artisan. He knows His craft extremely well.
Let the broken pieces fall where they may. God’s masterpiece will soon be realized. Then we will finally understand how each intricate piece played an important part in God’s magnificent design.
“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5).
As God chips away at the jagged fragments, may we continually surrender our lives to the Master’s vision and design.
