Dave’s Monday Blast – June 13, 2022

I just returned from spending a couple weeks with my family and some friends camping. Our camp trips always include riding quads, eating great (well different) food, staring into the fire ring, watching the stars and the bats, looking for Big Foot, and of course, shooting guns. I just love the whole camping experience; especially when you do not have cell service (you know what I am saying) as one is provided with a great deal of quiet time in between all the activity and conversation.

I have been wrestling with a broken foot for many weeks. My life has been very different as I have worked through all the changes it created to my life flow. It has reminded me that it takes very little to change our lives. We are indeed a work in progress in every way. But I embrace the truth that God loves me just as I am today and who I will be tomorrow.

In his book, “You are God’s Masterpiece” Pastor Charles Stanley comments: “What does God see when He looks at your life? Well, He sees far more than you see. We see ourselves as unfinished products. We see ourselves, for example if it were a portrait, as being unfinished. When God looks at you, He not only sees you as you are, but beyond that, He sees what you can be, and what you will be: a person of worth and great promise.”(Ephesians 2:10) 

I think it is so important for us to be reminded of just how God sees us, as a beautiful one of a kind masterpiece.  But I also need to be reminded that I am also a masterpiece that the artist is still working on. I am still being fashioned into His image. He sees our beauty because it is His nature to love before something is deemed ready or worthy. Paul reminds us that “while we were YET sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The question is, if God sees us this way, can we also admire our own unfinished business? Can we also enjoy the beauty of our friends and family while they are in progress? That may be just the thing that enables us to love as Jesus loves and to care for our neighbors as ourselves.

You and I are just like the many different people that we read about throughout Scripture. Ordinary people through whom God has done and will do some extraordinary things. When God is allowed to “touch our lives” when we listen to Him “speaking to us” through His Word and through His people, and we respond in obedience, He will make our lives extraordinary.