Refinishing

Today I started a refinishing project on an old piece of furniture that nearly got ruined. What's so fun is the process and hopefully the reward when it's all done. After I started scrapping off the stripper and the layers of paint that came with it I saw the original wood and I am really hoping that once it's sanded down smooth it will be restored and be a potential show piece. Okay, maybe not a show piece, but better than it was before I started.
As I was in the process of scrapping I started thinking how this is what God does in our lives. We were created for relationship with Him but our choices, the world we were born into and other things ended up bringing out our ugliness and covered our beauty. The Bible, the work of the Holy Spirit and fellow followers of God can act as the chemicals and tools needed to peel back the gunk so our true beauty can be shown, most people shun this process.
In Genesis we read the account of creation. Each day God created something very unique and at the end of the day He said it was good. However when He finished creating man He said was was VERY good! Creation took 6 days and what we discover all over the world is amazing. Plants that are incedibly beautiful, bright tropical fish, mountain peaks that rise out of the earth toward the skies and canyons that are much more than grand! You get the idea, if not check out tomorrow's sunrise or sunset! Humans need more than 6 days for creation, we need 9 months to be formed. Psalm 139 shares a word picture of God knitting us in our Mother's womb, it says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. That God takes 9 months with each of us and only needed 6 days for glorious creation says alot about how special we are!
No back to the stripping off the paint of the antique furniture. The process I am in right now is smelly, not easy, time consuming and it may rub my fingers a little raw, but I am keeping my sights on the end product for when I can brush some light stain over the natural grain of the wood and it's original beauty will be seen.
I am not sure what gunk is covering your inner beauty, it could be doubt in yourself or that others placed there when you were young, it could have been a wound from the past that you have hung onto even though you wished you wouldn't. It could be shame, fear, an incident that you think can't be overcome, a really poor decision you regret or a failure you can't seem to let go of. Why not do the hard work of stripping away these coats of ugliness so your true beauty can be seen and you can live a life of freedom and beauty? It starts with a prayer of admitting you aren't who you want to be or could be, a prayer of surrender to let God do what He wants. Next, make a list of wrongs that you have done or that have been done to you, deal with them in a healthy way and move on. Believe the best in yourself and in others and get rid of the everyday cynic in you and take the high road. He makes all things new, the old is gone and the new has come and it's just a prayer and some stripping and sanding away!