Sorry...

I have a confession to make. I am arrogant. I have another confession. I am terribly hard on myself. Actually, I am both of these things, but right now, I'm going to talk about my tendancy to be arrogant.

Every once in a while God uses me to help someone. I fully know it's Him putting the words in my mouth and all that, and it is just awesome to be used by God. But as soon as that helpful thing has taken place, my old friend, you know, the one who comes to "steal, kill and destroy"? Well, he comes to take a beautiful thing that God has done, and try and pump up my pride. So I struggle with it just about every time, and I have learned a few ways to think about it, which I would like to share here.

Lets look at God as a carpenter first. When a carpenter fixes something, a passerby does not say, wow, that hammer did a good job fixing my house. No. They'll say, that carpenter did a good job fixing the house, right? Another example.

The statue of David. It is not recorded as "done by Hercules Sculpting equipment". No. It's done by Michelangelo. I think this point is fairly simple. The artist should get the credit, not the tool. Now here's an even more humbling point.

First of all, God is like super carpenter or artist, he could just push the nails in with His fingers, or shape the stone with His hands.

Now, when you read the first point, about the carpenter and the hammer, did you think, "now hold on, sometimes people do say, 'that hammer did a good job'". This is my more interesting point. In our culture, products are getting more and more credit for what the worker/artists/athlete accomplishes. Nike shoes make Michael Jordan jump higher. Black and Decker make the job look better and get done easier.

But here's what God loves to do. He goes to the tool box, and doesn't take the nice shiny new hammer. He doesn't take the moderately used, average hammer. No, he ducks down, and finds the old hammer that's been sitting on the floor under the desk for months. You know, the one that you didn't really want to look for, because you wanted an excuse to buy a new one anyway. it's covered in rust, and looks like the handle looks like it's ready to be put into the sarcophagus due to masses of duct tape holding it together, and he heads over to the project, and creates the most beautiful piece of art: Just so no one can say, "Oh, that's because he used a top of the line hammer."

Some thing else has happened to. Some thing a keen observer would notice. As the Lord used the hammer, it was being healed. The rust faded, the tape fell away, and when the project was done, The hammer is more beautiful than any other tool in the shop.

I hope this little analogy helps someone else as well. Take care.