Worth a re-post – a reminder that outside we are always wasting away while the Lord works on the inside of us most – leaving the outside up to us to show His Polish in our attitude and our lives and our love.

Worth remembering that we have a lot of sand in our midst – it could feel like polishing sand, or irritating sand like in our bathing suit or cars after a beach trip, or could be “good” but corrective sand on sandpaper to smooth things over on us – and it IS worth remembering that in the WHOLENESS of time in God’s Hand, we ARE sitting in HIS Oyster – if we get more polishing on His pearl it is because He is molding us into His Image, helping us become better….

Polishing HIS Pearl, REPRISE writing:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of LIGHT.” Matthew 6:21

Putting on my pearl necklace this morning, dressed up for the big boss coming to work today, I looked in the mirror and I smile at how God has changed me – first and most crucially inside – by growing Jesus in my heart and focusing my gaze inward to growing Him and shining Him, then later changed me outwardly by my weight loss and increased fitness… God plucked up the pearl inside me and started polishing.

I love to sing the praise band lyric based on Psalm 105:  “Make known among the nation’s, what the Lord has done! Sing to HIM! Sing praises to HIM… Tell all HIS wonderful acts!”…

I know it’s God’s timing but sometimes I wonder to marvel why Jesus was cultivated in me for SO long until God cracked open my oyster. I wondered why it wasn’t until the age of 45 that I awakened to the knowledge that God had claimed me for HIS own, drove me directly into Jesus’s arms to wake me up. I know HE waited until I was ready to open my eyes.  I marvel at the intensity of my love for Him and how rapid it developed… I know and appreciate it was HIS specific timed window of opportunity – not too early, not too late… And I know He STILL has work to do in me and now I must help Him help me – by asking Jesus to shine on dark areas of my ever human sinfulness.

Because of HIM and HIS LOVE. I was caught in the net where I previously had struggled with being caught. When I stopped struggling (and stopped scratching God’s polish on His pearl) and I became STILL, that’s when I let Jesus scoop me up WHOLE HEARTEDLY. He knew I needed HIM before I was even born. He knew I needed Him ever more, now and forever…

Jesus’s net is cast from the inside. His shining pearl is lovingly kept inside of us for all to see. When we open our eyes and our pearly smile we shine HIM thru us. The “key” – like those attached to my “I love Jesus” keychain – is that Jesus cracks us open from the INSIDE. Jesus is the pearl in our oyster. God waits until it is harvest time – then God polishes. We become the beneficiaries of HIS shining… His Grace… His LOVE…

Amen

John 6:37-39, 45 (NIV)
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
… It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.”