I OPENED this segment of consideration commenting on the fact that I’m getting up there in years, and beginning to feel it.
So, teach me to number my days oh Lord, that I may gain a heart of wisdom. Psa. 90:12
I FIND I’ve become quite contemplative, looking back with considerable reflection. In talking to others up there with me, I see I’m not alone in these moments of musing. One thing however, gives me great joy, and that is watching my children as they have grown and others in the church and circle of contacts who have matured over time to something quite wonderful. All this gives witness and validity to JR Miller’s The Beauty of the Imperfect. There truly is beauty in the imperfections we see that form are be shaped into amazing things by the hands of providence.
Life is a lively process of becoming. – Douglas MacArthur
I COULD give countless examples, one in particular coming to mind, a person who at one time as a very young youth I thought was heading for disaster and eventually, — well, I could see no good end. Even after my mental prognostication the young person suffered a series of personal disappointments and hardships that to a lesser soul would have only made things worse. But it didn’t (I’ve come to love that word, “but;” especially when it is “But God!”). That young person grew to a young adult and mature adult evidencing Christ in everyway. Things are still not easy for that individual even though they make it appear that they are! Again, things are not always what they appear to be on both sides of the equation.
SO again, I encourage you to pay attention to what Pastor Miller has to say here in The Beauty of the Imperfect. They are worth taking to heart.
In the inexorable blessings of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2
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The Beauty of the Imperfect – Pt3
J. R. Miller
In the New Testament, a distinction is made between perfection and blamelessness. We are to be presented faultless at the end, before the presence of the divine glory—but even here, with all our imperfection, we are exhorted to live so as to be unblameable. That is, we are to do our best, living sincerely and unreprovably. Then as Christ looks upon us—he is pleased. He notes many faults, and our best work is full of mistakes—but he sees beauty in all the imperfection, because we are striving to please him—and are reaching toward perfection.
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith… Heb. 12:2
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Phil 1:6
There is a home of wealth and splendor in which the most sacred and precious household treasure, is a piece of puckered sewing. A little child one day picked up the mother’s work—some simple thing she had been making and had laid down—and after a half hour’s quiet, brought it to the mother and gave it to her, saying, “Mamma, I’s been helping you, ’cause I love you so.” The stitches were long, and the sewing was drawn and puckered. But the mother saw only beauty in it all, for it told of the child’s love and eagerness to help her and please her. That night the little one sickened, and in a few hours was dead! No wonder the mother calls that little piece of puckered sewing, one of her rarest treasures. Nothing that the most skillful hands have wrought, nothing of greatest value among all her household possessions, means to her half so much as that piece of spoiled stitching by her child.
May not this be something like the way in which God looks at his children’s humblest efforts to do things for him? We are well aware how faulty even the best Christian work done in this world must seem to our Master—how full of unwisdom, of unbeauty, how foolish much of it, how mixed with self and vanity, how untactful, how indiscreet, how without prayer and love, how ignorant, how ungentle. But he does not chide us for it, does not blame us for doing so imperfectly, the sacred things he gives us to do. No doubt many of our poor blunders, our most faulty pieces of work, are held among our Master’s most sacred, most cherished treasures in heaven!
Then he uses our blundering efforts, if only love and faith are in them, to bless others, to do good, to build up his kingdom.
……to be continued
