Surfing The Mine

Dear Friends,

If you were to spend 10 minutes watching TV with me, you would quickly realize that I am a habitual channel surfer. It’s very hard for me to stay on one channel because I'm always thinking there might be something better on somewhere else that I don't want to miss. So I “surf”. That’s why I recently found myself watching a few minutes of, “The Great Mysteries Of Geology” on The Learning Channel.

The program caught my attention because it was talking about how diamonds are mined through what's called the “pipe mining process”. For those of you who missed this episode, here’s a quick recap:  in “pipe mining”, diamonds are extracted from the earth through volcanic pipes, which are natural pipes in the ground made from volcanic activity. The diamonds aren’t sorted out at the mine. Instead, huge rocks that are full of diamonds are brought out of the mine and moved to a screening plant where they are separated out by strong blasts of air, and then strong currents of water. Through both of those processes, the dirt is stripped away - and you're left with a diamond that is then cut and polished.

As I heard the explanation of pipe mining (and then saw it in action), I couldn’t help but think about our relationship with God. I especially thought about how God can see what's underneath all the dirt and gunk in our lives, and how He takes us through difficult times that are opportunities to have all our dirt and gunk blasted away to reveal the beauty of what He's created in us.

The apostle Paul describes this process in Philippians 1:6, where he writes:  “I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” And then in Ephesians 2:10, he tells us that:  “We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” Both of these verses help us understand that, inside each of us, there's a treasure waiting to be formed and polished by God. It’s how He made us. And the pressures and struggles that make up our everyday lives are some of the tools He uses to reveal the treasure inside of us. We really are God’s “diamonds in the rough.”

So today, let's ask God to help us surrender to the refining process He’s doing in our lives. Let’s ask Him to give us the faith, and hope, and strength to keep going when the challenges of life blast away at us, so that we can become the treasure He created us to be.

Amen?

Daniel