Art: our lives as a thing of beauty in God's hands

During seasons of rest and stillness, it's tempting to think nothing much happens. However, God uses these times as periods for growth, honing our souls, shaping us into greater Christ-likeness.

Although we may not yet be fully fledged works of art, we are works in progress, not left gathering dust on the shelf. 

Even as our Master Craftsman wields His instruments, we may resent the strokes that are creating art and beauty from our hardened clay. Until we learn to yield, become softened, malleable to His tender touch.

It's been a struggle for me to sit with stillness over the last few weeks, surrendering to deeper rest. My busy brain and restless soul have taken time to settle down and go with the flow of God's unforced rhythms of grace, instead of my usual hassle and haste.

The refining, shaping process can feel uncomfortable. I've discovered I'm not as pliable or surrendered as I thought I was. There's a degree of resistance, rough edges within needing to be sanded and smoothed.

Sometimes the thought of all the work God needs to complete in us makes us despair. Because we can forget that cracked, broken vessels need shaping, to go through fires of adversity, to be made fit for a holy purpose we can't yet see. 

Prayer Whisper: 'Unveiling'

"As a sculptor works diligently on resistant stone, so I am sculpting a thing of beauty from the granite hardness of your soul, replacing a heart of stone with a heart of flesh, making all things new. Each hammer and chip, every chisel and blade is refining your heart and mind.

I see all you are becoming. My eyes have the end view in sight, even as I work on all that you are now. Days of patient toil, little by little, are transforming you from the inside out. Remember you are safe in the Master Craftsman's hands. 

Yield yourself to the process. Accept the pierce of My Word, the fires of adversity where I hone you to perfection. Enlarge your vision to include all you will become by My grace. Do not resist My hand on your life or run away from the loving correction I offer you.

For I fashion you according to My desires and plans for your welfare, to give you hope and a future, to prosper you and not to harm you.

Although the process of refining may feel never-ending, it has a purpose. In due time, what has been concealed will be revealed.Your beauty will shine forth as it reflects My own. An unveiling will take place when you are ready to see it, and it will be glorious to behold. 

Meanwhile, others will catch delightful glimpses of all I am shaping you to be. They will marvel, be blessed and encouraged by what they see. And you will have insights along the way to enable you to bear the brunt of My blade upon you before the unfolding begins."

God is our heavenly Father, who gently disciplines and instructs us. Though some of us haven't known an earthly father (or one who was good to us), we can trust God to love us unconditionally, to be a Father to the fatherless. 

While we celebrate the important men in our lives this Father's Day, may we be thankful for just how much God always cares for us. May we remember our art, our lives are all the better for His refining processes.

Joy Lenton is a grateful grace dweller, contemplative Christian writer, poet and blogger, author of 'Seeking Solace: Discovering grace in life's hard places'. 

She enjoys encouraging others on their journey of life and faith at her blogs wordsofjoy.me and poetryjoy.com as she seeks to discover the poetic in the prosaic and the eternal in the temporal. 

You can connect with her on Twitter and on Facebook.