Home Tools for your Journey June 21

Sunday, June 21

For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
—Philippians 2:13

Thankfully, it’s not all up to us. We’re not the creator of our own selves, nor the perfecter of our own imperfections. We are collaborators with heaven when it comes to the maturation of our own souls.  As a collaborator, it doesn’t all depend on us, nor does it leave us as passive, helpless recipients of heavenly designs.

When the breath of life first flowed through our nostrils, giving us the life of a human being, we were given also the freedom of self-determination. Throughout the course of our days, we exercise that self-determination in ways that shape our soul as surely as a potter forms a pot.

Sometimes we make indentations that distort our beauty. Sometimes we shape too hard and cracks begin to form. Sometimes we shape too gently, and no distinctive pattern emerges at all. Sometimes we mold so creatively, we surprise ourselves, and, perhaps, even our Creator.

Still, when all is said and done—when we have completed our least and most effective work—the hand of God moves in to smooth out wrinkles, repair cracks, fill empty pockets, and put on the finishing touches that make us what we were originally intended to be when first we were conceived in our Creator’s eyes. When God is finished with us, we are fit for heaven.

Gracious God, let your touch perfect what is incomplete in me.