Your Enemies Are Your Sandpaper

Jul 3, 2012

You know, I finally realized a few years ago that whining is just not attractive.  We need to appreciate everything that happens to us be it good or bad.  Wisdom comes by weathering the entire storm and living to tell about it.  By this I mean that in everything there is a purpose.  If that is true, them even in your bad situations, there is some good.  I now reflect quite a bit on when I was young and worked around the shed with my uncle.  I wanted to learn about some of the things that he was doing in carpentry and he gave me a piece of sandpaper.  After explaining to me what its purpose was he told me to grab a piece of old wood that he had on the counter.  It was a little splintered, chipped on the corners and to me just non usable.  What he showed me was priceless.  He said, take your sandpaper and begin to rub briskly back and forth across the top of the wood.  He then showed me how to handle the corners.  As I followed his instruction, the wood piece began to change.  The top begin to smooth out.  The corners that used to be chipped, began to take on a round shape.  I was amazed and could not believe what I was seeing.  So when I apply that to what my enemies try to do to me, I find that I change and take on new shape with every situation they throw at me.  God uses them to smooth out the surface (which became rough from the bumps and bruises of life), shave off of the splinters (which stick out from previous wounds which never healed properly) and they round the edges (so that turning corners in my life would now become smoother transitions).  He then has that piece of wood painted and glazed to be used to bring new life to an old home and tosses the sandpaper because it is of no more use.  But do acknowledge that it served its purpose.  You are just about to be used for something far greater that you ever imagined or expected.  Embrace every enemy and thank them for helping you move into your new you!!!

SW