Tarnished Hearts

“But the Lord said unto him, ‘Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name.’ Acts 9:15.

Last year about this time we were preparing for Mother’s wedding to a wonderful man who has settled right in to our crazy family. We love him, and I call him our ‘exceedingly more’ blessing. God certainly gave us more for which we could ever have imagined or asked (Ep 3:20). I wanted to use my friend’s beautiful silver dishes which she acquired from her grandmother. She hadn’t had the chance to clean them since they divided things up in their family. She was more than happy to share the beautiful dishes, but I understood that I would be spending days with tarnish remover, rubber gloves and a ton of elbow grease. I just couldn’t believe the beauty of the silver once the work was done. It went from dull to shiny…black to silver…dark to brilliant. There was something powerful about the process of bringing beauty and restoration back into something that had been shelved and untouched for a long time.

I wonder if that is how God felt when he reached for me in Feb of 2006. I had been His since the beginning of my life, and I cannot remember a time when He wasn’t a focus in our home. But my lack of intimacy with Him kept me in the curio, and I became tarnished and used very little in His kingdom. But one day as He considered my life and saw the journey up ahead He knew I would need a more active and living relationship. He gently lifted me from the life I was living and worked on my heart, removing the dark places that had lost its shine and beauty. It has been a wild restoration project where some silver breaks through but there is still a lot of spiritual tarnish to remove. The point is to be that vessel that allows Him to take the darkness and replace it with brilliance. Only in His hands can He restore our life and circumstances that will be more beautiful than the ones we originally had. He is the only One who knows what situations will eventually bring forth the valuable silver…our testimonies.

Whatever has been tarnished in your life will be replaced with brilliance when placed in His hands. We can know with everything in our heart that God has an ‘exceedingly more’ blessing up ahead for you and for me. Every single detail of every set of circumstances have been crafted and orchestrated for your life to display His reflection. And what beautiful vessels He will display for His glory in His kingdom.