“For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7
My father-in-law gave Travis a jar of old lead nail heads the other day. All Travis could talk about was melting them down to make fishing weights.
If I was any kind of blogger at all I would have thought to take pictures of the process… but I didn’t. I could go take after pictures now… but that would involve getting up off my rear and I don’t want to do that. So you’ll just have to use your imagination!
They set everything up outside and by the time I made it out to watch they already had a few made. Brian had a tin can heating on the grill burner to melt the lead in while they got the mold ready. But when I looked in the can the nail heads were just sitting there, not changed at all. It took them a few minutes to get the mold fixed just right and I kept checking on the lead waiting on it to melt, but it still looked the same… 4 or 5 dirty, old nail heads in the bottom of the can.
Finally they had it all ready. Then Brian took a stick and poked at the nail heads… and suddenly instead of dirty, ugly nail heads there was bright, shiny melted lead in the bottom of the can.
I was thinking about that later and got to thinking about people. Often we get so frustrated with people, we look at them and think they’re never going to change. Sometimes months, or even years, can go by and they still seem like the same old person. We might get fed up and want to give up on them. Or, we might be tempted to do God’s job for Him and tell them all the ways they should be changing.
But, we can only look on the outside… we can’t see the work God is doing on the inside. Sometimes it takes a while for those inward changes to be manifested outwardly. If we’ll just be patient, when the time is right, God will give that one last nudge and that one we thought would never change… WILL.
