One of my favourite pastimes has been to collect driftwood, carve away the bleached surface, and see what beauty lies in
the grain beneath.
One day while walking along Birdlings Flat, a very stony beach near where I live, I swooped on a piece of wood that
reminded me of a patu, a Maori club. I was teaching about Maoris at the time in my classroom, so my mind was not far
from the subject. I added the form to my bag, and went on with my search.
When I got home after this particular scrounge along the beach, I took out the ?patu?, but this time I had grasped it
from the other end. It was then that I discovered the perfect outline of a lady, complete with hat, long curly hair, and
flowing gown. I guessed it was the remains from a scrub fire which had been washed down a river to the sea and then
tossed back onto the beach. It looked like a piece of native manuka tree root.
I spent many hours on that piece of wood, whittling away the burnt surfaces until I had exposed some beautifully rich
grain. Then came hours of sanding, until it was super smooth, followed by many coats of polish so that the hidden
depths of honeycombed colour really glowed.
The whole exercise must have taken me about eighty hours. That carving was a gift I gave to my mother for Mother?s
Day over thirty years ago, and she still treasures it.
When I first picked up that piece of driftwood, I immediately made up my mind as to what I thought it looked like,
possibly because of the topic on Maoris that I was thinking about at the time. I readily jumped to a conclusion, before
the piece of wood and its shape had been studied carefully.
That reminds me of how guilty I am at times, to jump to a conclusion about someone and a situation, before I
know all the facts!
Secondly, it took hours and hours of hard work on my piece of driftwood before I even began to glimpse the
beauty underneath the blackened exterior.
Just this morning in church, I listened to a testimony that proved God is in the business of changing the unlovely,
angry people of this world, into beautiful, serene, Christians. Someone in our church had dared to get alongside
this angry, fierce man, and told him about the love of God. Gently the Lord has sanded the roughness off that
person until now he is almost unrecognisable with his inner beauty, glowing for all to see!
There is a poster that says, ‘Please be patient, God hasn?t finished with me yet!’ We all need to be cleaned up and
polished before we can show the inner loveliness of God’s peace within us. Committing our lives to Christ is just
the beginning!
“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment; instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading
beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.’ 1 Pet.3: 3,4
E-mail: Cynthia Rowse more.
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