Handiwork

I love creating.  Planning, executing, and watching the objective unfold fill my soul with unlimited amounts of hope, confidence, and a sense of purpose.  It does not seem to matter what type of project it is.  It could be something as simple as washing a car or as complex as turning a bowl, making a cabinet or even developing a business model.  The scope also includes music, worship, relationships, sports, and virtually everything I can imagine.  The nature of engaging in a challenge, getting one’s hands dirty, and watching the outcomes of one’s decisions, actions, and choices emerge is incredibly wonderful.
 
There is a warning that should come with the process.  Never imagine that someone cannot improve on your work!  I vividly remember bringing home my first wood turning project.  Dad was positive about the effort; then I found myself comparing my work to his.  I knew instantly, without comment or criticism, that there were better results ahead in the future.
 
I wish I could be bright enough to remember how I can extend the learning event of my youth into the rest of my life.  I often find my overly confident, not looking to continue the learning process.  I discover, often too late, that there is a better way to do things.  I even find, often after the fact, that my starting premise was simply wrong. 
 
Nowhere is my discovery more painful than in relationships, especially with Divinity.  I fall into a common trap.  “People with a lot of money [tools, or resources] hire craftsmen to make them gods.  The artisan delivers the god, and they kneel and worship it!  They carry it around in holy parades, then take it home and put it on a shelf.  And there it sits, day in and day out, a dependable god, always right where you put it.  Say anything you want to it, it never talks back.  Of course, it never does anything either!”  (Isaiah 46.6, 7)  Despite experience, the process seems to repeat itself.
 
Today I am looking for a new creation, me at God’s hand.