Holy Emotions - Biblical Responses to Every ChallengeSample

When my mom and dad were married, they were given an old dresser from my father's parents. This dresser had been in their chicken shed for decades, but my paternal grandmother thought that my parents could put it to use in their newlywed home. This dresser was covered with years of dust, chicken doo-doo and countless feathers from generations of hens. My grandmother tried cleaning it up but found it impossible, so she just covered all of that residue with a coat of ugly, olive green paint. This putrid, olive green dresser sat in our upstairs hallway throughout my childhood. Mom finally decided to have the pea-green paint removed from that dresser. She took it to a family friend who had established a refinishing business in his garage My mom dropped it off one morning, and the very next day, Mr. C. called and told her to come by and pick it up. She couldn't imagine that he had refinished such a damaged piece of furniture so quickly and asked him how he had completed it in only 24 hours. Mr. C. explained, that as he researched features of this particular dresser, he realized that it was made during the Revolutionary War and that was a priceless heirloom. Mr. C. said that it was reminiscent of furniture made for George Washington himself! He refused to touch it and told my mother that it was worth tens of thousands of dollars. Mom insisted that Mr. C. was the one that she wanted to restore this piece of history. It took Mr. C. months to painstakingly restore this dresser to its original condition. When Mr. C. had removed the dirt, he began to buff the dresser - to varnish it - and to restore it to its intended beauty. You are that dresser - you were made to be valued and cared for. But instead, you have chosen to live in the chicken coop of life and it has camouflaged you with doo-doo, feathers and decades of dirt. And then, some well-meaning, self-help guru has painted you a vomitus hue. God desires to remove all of that and to gently and lovingly restore you to the natural beauty of His creation. Will you allow Him to do that? You have been created in His image to be part of His strategy at this time in history.