As he was speaking, I had a picture of a diamond with many facets. I felt God was saying that these two ladies were different facets of the diamond that was the family of our fellowship.
I felt God was saying too, that these were days for appreciating the beauty of that diamond and seeing the many members of the family which were represented by each facet of that precious stone. We should spiritually hold it up and admire it.
As in our mind’s eye, our spirit’s eye, we did so, the Holy Spirit would call someone to mind. Then, we should pray for them, that God would encourage them and bless them in whatever they were going through. This was a process we should repeat often, turning the stone round.
The thought then came into my mind, about how the diamond, as a precious stone, was formed. It seemed important that we bore this in mind while considering ourselves and others
I realised there were two processes involved – the creation and the honing. A piece of carbon would have been subjected to immense temperature and pressure, in order that it was transformed. I felt I should Google and see how this metamorphic process worked. This is what I found.
It is estimated that diamonds were formed around a mile under the surface of the earth. A piece of carbon was subjected to a temperature of 1000 degrees centigrade and under a pressure of more than 50,000 atmospheres. Some say this happened around 3.5 billion years ago.
It doesn’t take much to realise that what happens in the physical is mirrored in the spiritual, where God is the creator and master jeweller. It was then these verses, Psalm 139:15-16, came to mind. I was amazed as I realised the significance of these well-known verses, in regard to God’s work in our lives.
My frame
was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How
wonderful to appreciate that before I was born, God created me out of the dust
of the earth, the carbon if you will. From birth, He has been ‘working’ on me;
simultaneously creating the rough diamond and honing it to become the finished
gem He planned I should become.
I realise now that some of the things I have experienced in life have felt like I have been subjected to great heat or great pressure. I sense too that some of that heat and pressure was self-induced. I know I have sinned and, in the process hurt others, for which I ask forgiveness. I have also hurt myself and that has at least robbed me of momentary fulfilment. Above all else, I know I have grieved God through my sinfulness. How wonderful to know that having asked God for forgiveness, He was faithful and just to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.
I have come to believe that the ‘suffering’ we have to endure is somehow part of God’s transforming and honing process. I have no objective proof to back this up, only a deep sense of conviction. I can only trust God that this is so. I don’t pretend to understand it and I have told God so!
Someone who seems to have made more sense of suffering was a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, known as Brother Lawrence. He is quoted as saying in his Fifteenth Letter in ‘The Practice of the Presence of God.’: God knows best what we need. All that He does is for our good. If we knew how much He loves us, we would always be ready to receive both the bitter and the sweet from His Hand. It would make no difference. All that came from Him would be pleasing. The worst afflictions only appear intolerable if we see them in the wrong light. When we see them as coming from the hand of God and know that it is our loving Father who humbles and distresses us, our sufferings lose their bitterness and can even become a source of consolation.
I believe the things we suffer in life, in body, soul or spirit, are often referred to and illustrated in the lives of God’s people in the Scriptures. That is why James in his epistle (James 1:2) says: Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
I believe that God wants to encourage us that the situations in which we find ourselves are not down to circumstances or chance. Rather they are about His divine purposes to transform each of us. Therefore, we can welcome them, count them all joy, because they are not without purpose.
We just see the carbon and the rough diamond but God, who sees the end of all things as well as the beginning, sees the precious gemstone. ‘On the day when I act,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not’. Malachi 3:17-18
