The Flaw of Perfection
Don't forget---you're perfect. You are not one IOTA out of place from how God made you and how God intended you to be. Perfect, by virtue of His perfection. Your faults make you who you are---they're part of your perfection. Correcting your faults only serves to reflect His greater glory...
A friend of mine wrote these words in reply to another friend's post. They've sat here in my "drafts" folder for several weeks now; the title standing silently before me, patiently waiting for my mind and my hands to shape the feelings and echoes in my soul into thoughts and words that can be expressed to others.
I still don't know if either the thoughts or the words are truly shaped, but the title has been standing long enough and its questions need to be heard.
While I have held many titles and many jobs, there are very few things which I am. I am a philosopher. I am a fighter. I am a confessor. I am an artist. I am a teacher.
It is these last two which resonate with Jon's words: artist and teacher. An artist isn't a person who recreates what he sees. He is a person who looks at what is there and sees what it can be. A canvas will be a God. A lump of clay will be a testament to duty. A little girl will be a haunting reminder of war. A true teacher looks into a person and sees what they can accomplish; what they can become.
Both the teacher and the artist take what is before them--with its emptiness and its flaws--and shape it into what it can be. What results--be it sculpture or surgeon--is not shaped in spite of its flaws, but because of them. In the hands of a master, the flaw becomes integral to the shaping. It guides the master's hand as he works the tools. What the untrained eye sees as a schism or weakness, the master recognizes as the voice of the God whispering the secrets of the stone. "The stone wants to flow here. Follow it and it will do what you wish. Fight it and it will shatter in your hands.
There are people upon whom I look and within whom I see the lines and cracks of their lives. I see how they may be shaped. I see what they can become. I recognize the beauty and the strength in the shapes that could be created. It isn't something to be applied or pounded in, it's something which already exists within, and needs only a master's hands to shape it and bring it forth.
Imported from the Buzz
A friend of mine wrote these words in reply to another friend's post. They've sat here in my "drafts" folder for several weeks now; the title standing silently before me, patiently waiting for my mind and my hands to shape the feelings and echoes in my soul into thoughts and words that can be expressed to others.
I still don't know if either the thoughts or the words are truly shaped, but the title has been standing long enough and its questions need to be heard.
While I have held many titles and many jobs, there are very few things which I am. I am a philosopher. I am a fighter. I am a confessor. I am an artist. I am a teacher.
It is these last two which resonate with Jon's words: artist and teacher. An artist isn't a person who recreates what he sees. He is a person who looks at what is there and sees what it can be. A canvas will be a God. A lump of clay will be a testament to duty. A little girl will be a haunting reminder of war. A true teacher looks into a person and sees what they can accomplish; what they can become.
Both the teacher and the artist take what is before them--with its emptiness and its flaws--and shape it into what it can be. What results--be it sculpture or surgeon--is not shaped in spite of its flaws, but because of them. In the hands of a master, the flaw becomes integral to the shaping. It guides the master's hand as he works the tools. What the untrained eye sees as a schism or weakness, the master recognizes as the voice of the God whispering the secrets of the stone. "The stone wants to flow here. Follow it and it will do what you wish. Fight it and it will shatter in your hands.
There are people upon whom I look and within whom I see the lines and cracks of their lives. I see how they may be shaped. I see what they can become. I recognize the beauty and the strength in the shapes that could be created. It isn't something to be applied or pounded in, it's something which already exists within, and needs only a master's hands to shape it and bring it forth.
Imported from the Buzz