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I am not sure exactly what caught my eye that chilly Sunday afternoon. All I remember is that for some reason I finally saw what I had been oblivious to for years. It was wearily resting in the corner of a dusty, screened-in back porch. It stood almost seven feet tall with two solid wood doors on the bottom, a deep open shelf atop two, side-by-side drawers about half way up, and two doors covering the upper portion of the chest. One of the lower doors hung precariously on one hinge and the glass in both upper doors was missing.
The intriguing part of this discarded piece of furniture was its' abundance of cracked and peeling paint. Clearly visible from every angle were at least nine different colors of paint peaking through the chipped and scarred wood. Under the dirt and stains, one color in particular grabbed my attention. I poked around the porch until I found a screwdriver then carefully chipped off a small section of paint from a side panel. As I suspected, underneath the scars of time was the warm, golden color of solid wood.
“Is that oak?” I asked my in-laws.
“Yeah,” my father-in-law casually replied. “The chest belonged to my grandmother. It’s a pie safe. She used it to store freshly baked pies, cakes and bread. She got tired of looking at a plain old wooden cupboard, so over the years she painted it almost every color the hardware store had in stock. It’s been sitting in that corner for ten years. I tried giving it away but no one in the family wanted it. One of these days I’ll haul it out to the garage or use it for fire wood.”
Anyone with an eye for innate beauty could see that old chest was a masterpiece in the rough. It had not been built to store cans of antifreeze and oily rags in some dark, musty garage. It was not a useless pile of haphazardly-assembled wood simply occupying otherwise meaningful space. A master craftsman had designed that chest. It may have been worthless to most, but I knew a little bit of love and a lot of elbow grease would reveal its hidden beauty once again.
Astonished I replied, “But it’s solid oak! If you don’t want it, can I have it?”
“How soon can you get it off my porch?” he laughed.
Having moved the dilapidated chest into my basement, the refinisher in me went to work. Cans of gooey paint stripper, metal scrappers, steel wool, sand paper, eye goggles, and rubber gloves were scattered everywhere. Over the next three months, I scrapped off chunks of cherry red, lime green, sky blue, bright yellow, white, deep purple, tangerine orange, black and midnight blue paint. The waste bin looked like a busy kindergartner’s paint box.
Once down to the bare wood, I started the process of scouring the wood grain to remove the last traces of old paint. Then beginning with coarse sand paper and finishing with a finer grain, I sanded the surface of the chest until it was as smooth as glass. With the years of neglect finally removed, I was able to see the beauty of the warm, golden tones, and the rich wood textures and lines characteristic of genuine, solid oak furniture.
Standing the buffet upright, I then thoroughly cleaned the wood, replaced the door knobs, hinges and the center glass panels in the upper doors. I attached the intricate, rose-shaped cornice to the very top of the cabinet. The final touch was a brand new coat of light varnish to protect the bare wood.
After moving the buffet upstairs into the kitchen, I invited my in-laws to come and view the final product. They couldn’t believe their eyes. What had been an unwanted, dirty cabinet had been transformed into a beautiful, highly-valued piece of antique furniture.
Two years later, movers carefully secured the pie safe into the back of a semi-truck in preparation for my cross-country move. When my furniture arrived at its destination, the cabinet was nowhere to be found and had mysteriously been omitted from the manifest. I had little recourse but to accept the fact my prized antique pie safe had been stolen. Apparently others saw an object of such beauty they were willing to risk prison in order to possess the treasured item.
The work of redemption was absolutely completed with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Upon confession of our sins, by faith Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness. He gives us a new heart with brand new desires. But this is only the beginning of our new life in Christ.
God knows we are a “master piece in the rough.” He knows beneath the layers of pride and self-centered living there has now been implanted the genuine image of His Son just waiting to be displayed in all His glory. But there remains much debris which needs to be discarded from our lives if the world is to see the full, innate beauty of Jesus living in us.
The Bible uses the word “prune” metaphorically to mean, “to cleanse, of filth, impurity, etc.” Do you feel like you are being scrapped and sanded, cut and pruned? If so, be glad the master refiner/gardener is at work. Pruning is a painful process. But we must learn to trust God’s judgment. He knows exactly what needs to be removed from our lives so we can become more effective fruit bearers for His kingdom. It may take three months or three years. But God will be faithful to complete the pruning process. The question is, will we let Him?
If you belong to Christ and God is pruning you for greater productivity, you cannot remain in the kitchen. You were refined to shine. You were pruned to bear fruit. Get outside. Stand in the light. Let the world see the beauty of a transformed life. Help the world understand they simply cannot live without Jesus.
"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit." John 15:1-2
