New Crayons

As we were driving to church on Sunday, my youngest daughter discovered a crayon in her car seat.  Very soon, of course, she broke it in half.  She turned to her big sister and asked her to fix it.  Sister replied, “I don’t know how to fix a broken crayon.”  I immediately started mulling the problem over.  The only way I knew to fix a broken crayon would be to melt it down and re-mold it.

Ah yes God, are you talking to me before we even get to church?  I could see the picture so clearly.  Me, the crayon broken in pieces by someone’s hands who had not been gentle with my heart.  God saying the only way to “fix” it is to go through the fire to melt me down.  I think I remember something about this in the Bible, melting the impurities of sin out of us.  Then the re-molding of my shape, maybe this time into a shape even a little more like Jesus.

I will be a brightly colored new crayon again.  But new crayons don’t just sit in boxes.  They are used to make beautiful pictures.  Small artists drawing them across paper canvas and leaving some of their color behind.  God, I hope that is what you do with me too.  Draw my life across other’s, leaving some of my brightness on the canvas of their lives.

I know this process will go on my whole life.  Drawing and breaking, melting and molding.  I know I am safe in my Father’s hands.  I can come to Him with the broken pieces of my life and He will be gentle.

Sitting in church I smile to myself as the paster reads Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s masterpiece.  He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”  (Italics mine.)  I look around the congregation at us, the new crayons.  Each such a unique color, each adding such brightness to the world.  All of us, if we yield to God’s melting and shaping, ready to make masterpieces for Him.

“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”  Isaiah 48:10