"Precious Gem Stones"

Over the weekend we visited my in-laws who live about 45 minutes away. Its always a joy visiting them, feasting on some good food and swimming (summer heat calls for it!). Our visit yesterday was wonderful and my 6 year old found a new hobby - 'gemstone mining'!

His grandparents had just visited a mine up in the Carolinas and brought back a bag of dirt for him to play around in and mine for gemstones and hopefully 'gold'! So they began their process of getting scoops full of dirt, emptying them into the strainer thing (whatever its name is) and rinsing away with a hose to see what they could find. Almost on all scoops of dirt, my sons face would light up as he quickly picked out and rinsed off what he saw were obvious gemstones. It was fascinating to watch. Not only was it fun witnessing my son get all excited when he found something, but for me it was even more fascinating to see all the beautiful stones in such a vastness of color!

Seriously, I had never really understood how beautiful such creation was. I've seen gem stones before but for some reason, probably out of ignorance (eeek!), I have always thought that they were 'put together' by people. I had always thought that people 'make' these stones and that they were processed to get such beautiful color (derp!). I guess it was pure ignorance on my part to think such. I mean I know there is 'gold' that is mined in its pure form and I guess I kind of thought there were stones with beautiful colors and all that, but I just didn't really think I would actually be looking at such beautiful stones in their natural colors straight from NATURE itself (completely un-processed by man). It was almost as if I had been given a new pair of eyes to 'SEE' what awesome amazing beauty is in Gods great creation. SO CRAZY COOL! In a way I guess I was feeling the joy of my 6 year old boy. Just looking at the beauty of the stones - WOW!!

We looked at the roughly cut gem stones and observed their colors and designs and the vastness of their beauty in their raw roughly cut stage. My father-in-law explained that sometimes it can take up to three weeks to polish them (in a machine) to make those beautiful smooth stones that we see in shops or on necklaces or in museums, etc. Totally amazing! So beautiful in their raw stages, yet they can be made into even more beautifuller (if there is such a word) stones when they are polished until smooth!

Then choosing the perfect time for a teaching (the Lord always knows the perfect time), the Lord brought this revelation to me. These beautiful gemstones are HIS glorious creation , the WORKS OF HIS HANDS! HIS WONDERS! We HIS children are like these beautiful gemstones! We are HIS GLORIOUS creation, the WORKS AND WONDERS OF HIS HANDS! We are ALL created unique, with a vastness of beauty, color, design and pattern! Yet we are ALL GEMSTONES! We are ALL the WORKS of HIS HANDS! We are all CUT differently, shaped differently, feel different yet we are ALL ONE CREATION - THE WORKS OF HIS HANDS - GEMSTONES!! Together we are BEAUTIFUL! INDIVIDUALLY WE ARE BEAUTIFUL! There is simply NO END TO THE VASTNESS of BEAUTY and GRANDEUR because we are CREATED BY HIM - BY THE ONE WHOSE HANDS CREATE THE WONDERS OF THE 'GEMSTONES'! Like Isaiah said in Isaiah 64:8 - But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. So God in His creative and artistic way fashioned these beautiful gemstones and placed them in nature! Just like He in His creative and artistic way created 'US' unique and placed us here on His great Earth to SHINE like Him! I bet you He looks at us as a whole, as if we are all laid out on a canvas like the gemstones in the picture above, and He marvels at the beauty of the works of His hands. :)

What even more beautiful, is when we BECOME the children of God, he takes us through a journey, a process of 'refining' and 'polishing' to make us even more beautiful - even more like HIM! Just like the gemstones in the stage of 'polishing' for several weeks, so God our creator, takes us through a continuous process - daily of 'refining' and 'polishing' us to make us MORE LIKE HIM! (Philippines 1:6 - being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will continue to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus)! He works at us and on us so we can simply 'shine' as HE DOES! WHAT AN AWESOME THING!!! We start of beautiful, roughly cut with all our jagged edges and dirt, etc, then our heavenly Father takes us and washes the dirt of us, polishes us, smooths all our rough edges and makes us more like Him - we simply SHINE like HIM! And He does so day in day out - never ending because HIS LOVE FOR US IS NEVER ENDING!!! He wants us to 'shine' as those beautiful GEMSTONES that HE HIMSELF created us TO BE!!!!

So LET us SEE ourselves as beautiful precious gemstones! God created you as such! We are beautiful TOGETHER and INDIVIDUALLY! And whilst some of us may still have rough edges, just know that our Creator is in the continuous process of lovingly refining us and polishing us up to reflect Him and SHINE like Him wherever we are placed on His great Earth!

Be blessed fellow 'gemstones'!

P.s. I also thought it is pretty neat that the Word of God mentions precious gemstones too. In Revelation 21:19-20 "And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; (vs 20) the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst!"