God’s work in our lives

“My children, of whom I again travail in birth until Christ shall have been formed in you” (Galatians 4:19)

Let us remember above all else that God's people on this earth are in the making. This is His workshop and souls are being fashioned and formed in it. The final polishing touches we will not receive in the present life, but when this body of our humiliation has been transformed.

Suppose you go into a carpenter’s s shop and begin to find fault with his unfinished chairs and tables! You say, How rough this is! What an ugly corner that is! The carpenter will doubtless get angry and say, "Bear in mind that I am still making these things. They are not yet finished. Come and see the pattern after which they are being fashioned. See, this is what they will yet be like when I have done with them.”

He shows you beautiful chairs and tables - shining, perfectly formed, polished to perfection! Is the carpenter not right? Is the critic not in the wrong? The one looks at the things that are lovely and eternal. The other at those which are unlovely and, thank God, fleeting.

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