Diamonds

Good Morning!

1 John 3:1-2 New International Version (NIV)

1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Footnotes:
a. 1 John 3:2 Or when it is made known

Yesterday morning, as I began my drive into work, I began to think about diamonds. Okay, I admit it … my mind doesn’t work like a lot of people … some might think I am a little bit crazy. But what I was thinking about was how we are developed as believers. I doubt any of us – including me – would recognize a diamond in its original shape. It would probably just look like a rock. For most of us, our contact with diamonds is limited to the finished state … where the diamond is in a setting, polished, brilliantly reflecting the ambient light around it. We don’t see the workman sifting carefully through the dirt to discover the rock and to clean it up. We don’t see the diamond cutter carefully examining the rock for faults – and again carefully applying pressure to each fault to create a facet. We don’t see the polishing or the finding of just the right setting. We see the finished product and are amazed at its beauty.

What got me thinking about diamonds? Truthfully, it was my children and their spouses and their children. I think of them everyday. I think of the ups and downs in their lives. I think of the pressures that they face daily – some made by man; some made by their own decisions; but some applied by God to develop each one in order to let the light of Jesus Christ to shine through each of them. Now, like good old John says, we don’t know what each will be because it has yet to be known, but we do know that each shall be just like Him – beautiful diamonds reflecting the Light.

Each of us is a diamond in the rough. Each of us has value. Occasionally the diamond cutter will discover a fault that runs too deeply into the rock and know that the cut will split the diamond. It doesn’t mean the diamond is worthless but that the diamond is worth less. It is still a diamond! It still has value. It still can reflect the light. I know some people who feel their sins have hopelessly damaged them from being valuable to God. How wrong they are … for God can make the smallest diamond reflect the Light of Christ and bring beauty to the world. We must remember that it is God who is the Master Workman, finding us in the dirt of this world and cleaning us up. God is the Master Cutter, seeing our faults, applying the pressure at just the right spot to create the multifaceted lives that we know. And it is God who is the Light that reflects off of those facets. We are just a diamond, reflecting Light.

Today is a good day to reflect some Light. God bless you this good morning.

Agape’


Mr. Jim