Work in Progress

Jeanine and I were doing a little walk called ‘Venus baths’ at Halls Gap the other day. It is a small walk of about 1 kilometre. It is gentle and great exercise. You get to see how the weather and water has shaped the rocks into what they are today. There’s one of those nifty plaques where you can read all about this process and what has happened over the last couple of thousand years. It is quite remarkable.

It occurred to me that we too are continuously being fashioned into something quite special and lovely. We are tempted to think of the ageing process and how we are not perceived as being quite as outwardly gorgeous as we were in our younger years. But there is something else going on. The rough edges are smoothed away. The colours are heightened and we understand that there is more than what meets the eye.

The process is invisible and yet it is quite powerful. I know I am quite a different person at 61 than I was at 21. The Master Carpenter is continuously working on us to fashion us into something quite exquisite. This was eloquently captured by Kaouther Adimi in his book “A Bookshop in Algiers’. He writes

“He brought us into the world, shaped us, coaxed us told us off sometimes, always encouraged us, praised us beyond our merits, brought us together, smoothed us polished us set us righted us often raised us, inspired us. Never once did he say a word to suggest that we were anything else than a child of God. We were marching toward a magnificent future and we would bring heavenly glory to earth. We are his dream, his joy, his delight, his prize, his love”.