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Twisting & Turning Creates Beauty & Strength
Sponsored by CrisDental
We live in a culture that craves youth.
We fight wrinkles and bodies that creak.
I picked up a devotional called “Streams In The Desert” this morning and read this story I thought you might like.
“A gentleman, writing about the breaking up of old ships, said what improves the quality of the fiber in wood of an old vessel, is the straining and wrenching of the vessel at sea, the chemical action of the bilge water and the many different kids of cargoes.
Some planks and veneers made from an oak beam exhibited a few years ago at a fashionable furniture store on Broadway in New York, City, attracted general notice from exquisite coloring and beautiful grain.
Equally striking were some beams of mahogany taken from a bark which sailed the seas sixty years go. The years and the traffic had contracted the pores and deepened the color until it looked as superb in its chromatic intensity as an antique Chinese vase.”
Beauty intensifies when hardship is allowed to take its course.
The twisting and turning is not pleasant at the time, but when mixed with all types of cargo and allowed to season, those hidden things inside us create something wonderful.
It makes me wonder what my creator thinks of all the tummy tucks, belly lifts and the stretching of ones skin that is done in the pursuit of cultural beauty.
I wonder that God doesn’t weep just a little when He see’s the seasoned old man or woman, consumed with youth, paying thousands of dollars to erase the wrinkles He’s worked so hard to create.
What we see as age He see’s as experience.
I needed this story this morning.
For me it’s not the wrinkles and age spots that bother me as much as the irrelevance that seems to come with age.
Wisdom and experience are not valued much in the culture we live in.
I must remind myself that cultures measuring stick is not the same as my creators.
And like those old ships, God uses the years to bring out, what He see’s, as the true beauty of a life well lived.
As I read this I am experiencing the feelings of recent irrelevance. The church i have attended for 20 years went through a pastoral and leadership change and we seniors in the congregation suddenly became irrelevant as the church chose to throw away its history and go down the path of and embrace the "modern worldly Christianity". Suddenly, over 100 years of history was irrelevant and unwanted. It's sad, and what a pity, that the wisdom and knowledge of the ages has became irrelevant not only there, but also in our society. - M