Sunday Afternoon Tea

Silver and a bouquet of sage... beautiful.

I've been thinking a lot this week about God's way of molding us and shaping us throughout our life and how He sends people across our path to assist in His work.  It all started with a conversation with my daughter and how she is dealing with a character issue with one of the grandchildren.  I remembered when she was around that same age and I was also praying about character.

You see, I have often been told by others... as they were listening to my daughter or my husband... how astonishingly "brilliant" they are.  Especially when Stephanie was younger and before all of her days were spent juggling a household of seven people.  I will add here that no one has ever said she was brilliant like her mother... sigh.  Anyway, I digress...

Things did tend to come easy to her so as a child she would become quite impatient with people who were not as smart or quick or generally all together as she was.  Being my first child and the one I learned about parenting with... I was convinced she was going to grow up all cold hearted towards others.

Of course, that did not happen and Stephanie became was of the loveliest and warmest souls I know on this planet... besides the fact that I am somewhat biased... it is true.

Then I was talking to our friends who were our guests for dinner this week and sharing how Christopher has been asked to apply for a graduate Fellowship at the University.  My friend, Linda, already knows the story but I was telling her husband and son (her son's arrival home from Afghanistan was the reason for our celebration) how his father and I are completely befuddled by where this 4.0 student was hiding during his homeschool years.

The boy who spent two years on Saxon 1/2... the boy for whom we spent a year not teaching math to catch up on everything else... the same boy who absolutely despised math as both parents tried to teach him.  Suddenly... and it did seem overnight... he blossomed into this scholarship winning, president of everything, curve breaking, science student.  I never saw that coming.  I knew he was smart in history and other subjects... but Christopher a scientist???... you have to take math for that.

But the more I pondered this, I thought of my own beginnings in the faith when a school acquaintance was told to ask the "least likely person" in her class to become a Christian to attend a revival meeting at her church.  I was the "least likely" she asked that week.

How God has been faithful in molding and shaping that messed up fatherless girl through the years and He has promised he will not give up until it is time for my journey to end.  Just as with my children, He took what was available in youth and has added to it and molded it and formed it as the years have gone on into the person He wants each of us to become... never perfectly on this side of Eternity... but at least heading in the right direction.

I was not a very good student even through High School.  I was the one of whom the teachers would tell a parent "she has so much potential she doesn't use".  I thought of that one day while sitting in the Board Room of the corporation where I was working... there to help guide Vice Presidents in their long range planning session.  God had been molding and shaping...

I found it amusing that instead of a scripture verse this week, I kept thinking of that old bumper sticker, "Please be patient, God isn't finished with me, yet".  That saying I would roll my eyes at and think it an excuse for people not trying hard enough... and now in the autumn of life looking back and shouting a Hallelujah in agreement.

I hadn't thought of that for years until earlier this week and then just yesterday my friend in New Mexico called to chat awhile and repeated that very same saying.  I think God was trying to get it through to me and I am convinced He... with His Holy sense of humor... was chuckling as I stared at the phone when Kathy stated those words.

Oh, my friends... how I now see that He never gives up on us and He is the one who does the molding and the shaping and the creating within us something wonderful.  We are never what we are to become at age five or ten or fifteen or twenty or thirty or fifty or one hundred... not until we take our last breath is He finished with us.

So if your child is not what you want him to be... keep praying and teaching and guiding and listening and correcting.  Not a perfect husband or wife in the house... lots of prayer and forgiving helps that situation.  Frustrated at your own sinfulness and inadequacies... look into His Word, talk to Him, ask Him to bring teachers in person or through books your way... and give yourself the grace He gives you.

Be patient... God isn't finished with you, yet.  :)