A Word With You.

Got this in my daily email devotional today.
Good picture and analogy.

" Our grandson has one of those inquiring minds. So he really likes a gift he
got for Christmas; it's called a rock tumbler. You'll never guess what it does.
It tumbles rocks. The rock tumbler is placed in water, and these boring old
rocks are placed in the rock tumbler, you turn it on and you let the good times
roll! Those rocks start spinning, flying, and crashing into each other as they
churn around in the water. All they need is some music so they could have a rock
concert. Right? The atmosphere inside that rock tumbler is pure mayhem. But
after all the rockin' and rollin' and clashin' and crashin', something pretty
amazing happens. Before those rocks went through the tumbler, they were just
drab, boring hunks of stone. They come out displaying a beauty you would have
never guessed they had!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about
"Turbulence That Transforms."

If the real beauty of a dumb old rock is uncovered through turmoil and
turbulence, don't you suppose that could be true of us as people; of you as a
"people"? Could it be that all the hits that you've been taking right now are
actually part of God's "tumbler" to give you a beauty that you've never had
before? That's very much His way. Pressure and heat make a lump of coal into a
diamond. An oyster's irritation and aggravation from a grain of sand ultimately
emerges as a pearl of great price.

Maybe you need to stand back from just looking at what's happening to see
what God is doing through what's happening. Isaiah 61, beginning with verse 1,
our word for today from the Word of God, reveals some of how turbulence can
transform you. The Son of God says: "The Lord ... has sent Me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness
for the prisoners." You may feel like you're in one of those categories: you're
brokenhearted, you're captive, or you're a prisoner to darkness. That's not the
end of the story.

God's Son goes on to say He was sent to "...comfort all who mourn, and
provide for those who grieve in Zion; to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of
praise instead of a spirit of despair." Jesus makes beauty from the ashes of
your life, gladness from the grieving times, and praise emerging from a time of
despair.

Here's how God wants to help you look when you come out of the tumbler:
"They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the
display of His splendor." God wants to use the tumbler to make you strong and
indestructible like an oak. Suffering makes wimps into warriors. And He wants to
use the turbulence to give you such a beautiful relationship with Him that you
will be a stage to show His glory. Ultimately, the Bible says, "you will be
named ministers of our God." You'll be equipped by the hard times to be a
powerful instrument of God in other hurting lives.

The shaking you're enduring, the hits you're taking are tools in God's hands
to bring out an amazing beauty in you: a strength, a tenderness, a maturity, a
confidence, a compassion that come only from being beautified in God's tumbler.
So don't wallow in the "why is this happening?" quagmire. Instead, keep asking,
"How can God use this?" Don't despair when you keep running into things and
things keep running into you, when your whole world is spinning and colliding.
This isn't to destroy you. This is to give you a beauty you've never had before.
If you let God have His way in this turbulence, you will "display His splendor"
for the rest of your life!"

Ron Hutchcraft