The day started out so well and then I left my bed.
Have you ever had one of the days when everything was just a little off and a little irritating?
It began with not having half & half for my morning coffee then moved onto a rude telemarketer. The afternoon schedule was held up by a long line at the post office and ended by paying $5.40 for them to deliver something just 4 miles away.
It felt like a day of sifting right from the beginning.
As a young girl, one of my favorite utensils in the kitchen was the sifter. Mom would place it over the bowl and start dumping dry ingredients into this amazing apparatus. The jostling, shaking and tapping on the side would jumble the clumps of flour and clots of baking soda together, breaking them apart and sifting them down through those tiny wires. Fine, sifted, white powder would fall into a beautiful, cascading mound in the bottom of the bowl. And to this little lady, it was a thing of beauty.
But now, when I’m in the sifter, it doesn’t feel like beauty. These clumps of grumpiness and clots of attitude are not so fine. And it’s these clumps and clots that can clog up what God wants to do in our lives.
These clumps may not be evident to the general public, in fact, I’m actually pretty good at putting on a fine face for the cashier in the store or the bump-in with the church member. But for those living with me in the sifter, our bumping into each other reveals my true self and it’s not always pretty.
And that brings me right back to this One Word ~ Courage.
Courage to face and deal with the real me in the sifter.
The real me fails often. The real me falls short.
Yet that’s the beauty coming from the sifter.
This knocking and jostling is a refining work; knocking away what is coarse; bringing us to a finer state.
Through this working out stuff, we see the real us…imperfect and flawed. And it’s there, seeing with our eyes wide open, the Perfecter of faith working in us, sifting and refining us to be more like Him.
“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” ~ James 1:2-4 (The Message)
Tripping Over Typeset 
It is really scary to think the real me will get out, because I have seen the hurt and pain she causes when she escapes–and she seems to do that when I am at my most vulnerable, most tired. The me I like is the one that shows love and caring to the world. The Spirit-filled me, not the carnal me. What is it that Paul wrote? The thing I want to do I do not do, but rather I do the thing I do not want to do. It is a daily struggle to leave behind that wretched me and take up the saved me. Thank God He doesn’t cast us away when we are at our worst! (but that sifter–ouch!)
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So true! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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