What does a good author do to make a manuscript worth publishing? Easy—that first draft must undergo a thorough editing. Fluff needs to be cut. The characters need deepening lest they remain cardboard cutouts. The author adds colorful details, vivid verbs, inspirational dialogue… Of course, errors in spelling and punctuation must go.
Imagine how horrible the literary world would be if all authors typed “The End” onto their first draft, declared it “good enough,” then published it without revisions. Scary notion, isn’t it?
Yet, just as each manuscript needs polishing to make the story shine, so do you. Bluntly, the Lord wants to edit you and me. Jesus is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). If you’re one of our Author’s characters, He loves you more than any earthly author loves his novel. But that love doesn’t mean He wants you to remain a rough draft of your potential.
When a novelist sizes up his creation and cuts out paragraphs, scenes, or chapters, that doesn’t mean he hates his creation and wants to punish it. The writer is eliminating the dross to leave only gold. God does likewise. With loving care, He works to remove the vices and to polish our rough spots. Often a human author puts his hero through horrific events. So does God with us, but not just for fun or excitement. When He chastises His children or allows troubles, just like the conscientious writer, He desires to improve us. Troubles have a way of refining people. They cause us to re-evaluate our priorities and cut out bad elements while driving us back to God.
However, imagine a scenario in which an author labors for hours to prune sloppy lines from a story, only to have the characters reinsert those shoddy portions when the author looks away. How exasperating that would be! Fictional characters can’t do that, of course. But humans can. God works to edit from our lives the pride, dishonesty, disobedience, lust, anger, vengeance, and other vices that mar us. Certainly it must grieve Him when we reinsert the junk into our lives.
In the story of your life, do you resist God’s editing? Do you fight to remain a rough draft? Or do you submit to God’s editing and polishing so you can shine like the Son?
Good post.