God can use you, “warts and all”
I grew up out on the rural route and when December rolled around, it was an exciting time around our house when the day arrived for us to go get our Christmas tree. We didn’t go to a Christmas tree farm and select a cloned evergreen nor did we go to the local “mart” and pick out an artificial one simply because there were no Christmas tree farms nor a “mart” in Goldonna. We trekked along behind dad as he led us to the woods out back, ax in hand, to find our tree.
There were wild cedars scattered out among the pines and oaks and my mom, brother, sister and I fanned out looking for just the right one until finally, someone found the tree we could all agree on.
Dad would chop the tree, we’d lug it home and set it up in the middle of the living room. It was only when we walked around the tree to admire its beauty did the sad truth emerge. Pretty on all sides, except one, the cedar had grown too close to an oak or pine, which had robbed it of its symmetry. It was, as country folks would say, “whonker-jawed”.
Mom, always the innovator, had the solution. Place the tree in the corner rather than the center of the room, turn the skimpy side to the wall so it wouldn’t show and presto; we had a beautiful tree. The flaw didn’t diminish its purpose one bit.
I was reminded of a stalwart of the Bible who had a flaw but God used his malady to make the Apostle Paul the founder of many of the early churches.
2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 reads in part…”To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh…..Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me……When I am weak, then I am strong.’”(NIV)
Do you have a flaw that has kept you from being all that you can be for Christ? Little attention was paid to the Apostle Paul’s “thorn”, just as neighbors who admired our Christmas tree had not a clue that it, too, had a deficiency. Let God take what you have and allow Him to use you, warts and all, for His glory.
Glynn Harris
First Baptist Church, Ruston
