It seems so long since I have sat here and had a moment to put a few thoughts together.
We returned from a week in Cornwall three weeks ago and my feet have hardly touched the floor!
It is all too easy to get caught along with deadlines, action points, tasks and in no time to feel overwhelmed with life.
This week has been particuarly manic with my assistant taking time off and the pressure for me being quite intense.
I am away to Ireland on a business trip next week, and there have been, and still seem to be hundreds of things to sort out before I go.
While we were away we paid a visit to the place I photographed above. This is a tiny cornish village called Boscastle. It hit the news two years ago when a slow moving depression dumped several inches of rain on the hills above the village in a short period of time.
This in turn ran down the valley and washed away over eighty cars and destroyed a number of buildings.
The bridge above suffered such a battering from the cars that were being carried in the rapid flow, that it too was badly damaged.
Miraculously there was no loss of life, this was almost certainly due to the fact that it happened during the hours of daylight.
However two years on and there is little evidence of the massive destruction that took place. The reason being that they have had many experts at work restoring the village. If anything the work has been so well done that in many instances the latter is better than the former.
It reminds me that storms and and catastrophes can sometimes give us such a battering that we can feel as though we are all but destroyed.
When the winds subside we look around and see only debris littering our lives. We maybe even sink in despair and wonder if ever again can we know life as we knew it.
Just as there were experts to call on to rebuild the village, so I am reminded that we too have a Restorer. He is the Restorer of our souls, and is in the business of restoring ruined, and wrecked lives.
It reminds me of a beautiful simple chorus we used to sing years ago.
Something beautiful, something good.
All my confusion He understood.
All I had to offer Him was brokeness and strife
But He made something beautiful of my life.
We may get frustrated with the speed that it is taking to make us into the vessels that we would like to be, however we need to keep in mind that He is building something that is eternal.
What we need to remember is that He is not just shaping us, but also fitting us.Yet to make us fit means that the preparation is also going on in other lives so that like it says in
Eph 4:16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Sometimes the hammer blows can seem so hard, but be encouraged by the answer the sculptor gave when asked how he could carve such a magnificent horse from a block of marble. "I simple hammer off the bits that don't look like a horse".
Our restorer is simply hammering off the bits that are not shaped in the image of Jesus. Surely this is a work in progress, and will not last a moment longer than He deems fit.
Let us submit to the hands of the Master Builder in the sure and certain hope that we are being changed from one degree of glory to another.
