Good Monday morning! Practical tip of the day: Never, never, scorch a bag of popcorn right before the weather turns cold. Welcome to the return of winter for Nebraska. We enjoyed a lengthy spell of nice, now we get some cold again. And once more we arrive at the last day of the first month of the year. A portion of the year is gone already.
On Saturday, we shared an example involving sculpture. We often hear this example used in life and our faith. And just to grind it in a bit, I had another thought on that. In Proverbs, Solomon wrote the following: Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. (27:17) I wondered if in this life each of us didn't have a bit of polishing to do on each other. As with most analogies, this one has more beneath the surface. Polishing cloths or papers come in different grades of roughness. A smooth polishing cloth would be used at the very final stages of preparation to make the sculpture shine. A rougher cloth, more like sandpaper, would be used when the surface of the work is still rough, but the shape has been chipped out of the stone. The rough cloth would be like the abrasive person you met at a Bible study but didn't really like that well. You might say they rubbed you the wrong way.
We seldom think of an abrasive kind of personality as possibly having the greater effect at rubbing more of our rough edges off. We like the smooth polishing action of those friends who don't dig too deep. However, a close friend may at times have that tough, abrasive action of the sandpaper. You and I might need a bit of rough sanding in a particular area of our lives, and Jesus may send a close friend to do a bit of hurting on us for a time. Neither of us will like the rough part, but in Christ we are brought through the tough time and we shine in the end.
Some of us in the body of Christ may even have a gift for polishing our brothers and sisters in Christ. A person may possess the gift of wisdom and good advice. Another may have the gift of seeing past the words of a person to the heart of the problem. None of us should try to be as abrasive as possible in order to "polish" the body of Christ! But some may have a gift for saying the tough things at the right time. Any of us might say to friend at some point, "Ouch! That really hurt! But thank you, I really needed to hear that." There are times when the pain and the gratitude are separated by a year or so.
In the same way a surgeon probably didn't start her career by remarking on how much she enjoys cutting into human flesh. What she spent all those years in education and training for was to heal in the best way our medical science knows right now. Not even surgeons would say that cutting open the body is the best way to heal a person, but it is necessary sometimes. The reward is in the final healing, not in the cutting. One day, we will all see Jesus and he has a much better way of healing and polishing his creations. The Bible speaks of fruit used to heal the nations, and of white robes, and no more pain or sorrow or suffering. The promises Jesus has made sound pretty good, especially when compared with our situation now.
Will friends still sharpen friends in Heaven? I don't know, but I certainly hope all of my friends and loved ones are in Heaven to find out! Have a great and God-glorifying day in Christ!
Bucky
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