Aug. 19, 2008 - Revised Post - Diamonds and Perfection
Last week one of the homeschoolers gave a short speech on Diamonds. She actually had a $72,000 diamond with her to show us. Just for proof – here I am.
Apparently this diamond has many flaws in it so a jeweler would recommend it to be in a necklace not a ring because people look closer at rings than they do necklaces! Go figure! I reckon I’d look pretty close at either if it cost $72,000!
We all enjoyed seeing such a huge diamond but there was a moral to the story. If such a beautiful gem, and expensive gem can still have flaws then it kind of puts a different slant on perfection and value doesn’t it!
We need to see ourselves as gems, worth far more than $72,000 in God’s eyes, He sent His son to die for us – that is how much we are worth to Him (already, now, today!)
Thanks to Luke’s comments I am going to expand my thoughts on perfection, and write them a little less statically.
So often we live to a man-made standard of perfection, always striving to be good enough. Our actions will never be good enough to be right with God. This is why Jesus came.
If we are to focus on our actions, what we don’t do, how we can’t do enough, we will be riddled with guilt. Once again this is why Jesus came. There is no guilt in Christ Jesus.
God desires our hearts. He wants our worship, our love. And yes once our hearts are full of love for Him we find that we want our actions to please Him too. No longer is our life striving to please but rather an act of love and worship, strengthened by His grace and love for us.
In my previous post I did say “But nowhere does God require perfection”. Let me expand because Matthew 5:48 does say, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
As women, as homeschool mums, homemakers, and wives we often look at our lives and see ourselves lacking. We don’t keep a tidy house, our ironing is piling around us, meals aren’t what we desire, and are we doing enough with our children? We have an ideal homeschool mum, wife, mother, haunting us in the back of our head. It is that standard of perfection that God doesn’t require. And yet so often it is that standard that we judge ourselves on.
As I researched the word perfect as used in the Bible I found that it was translated with a few different words - pure, without blemish, mature, blameless. These words indicate a moral completeness, and Scripture is clear that this is made possible because of Jesus.
This morning I enjoyed the study of Matthew 5, in connection with the word perfect and there is so much more to be gleaned. But my thoughts keep returning to the diamond. The diamond was assessed as valuable even with the blemishes that the human eye could see. The same goes for me and you – regardless of the human blemishes we can see, God sees us differently, He has made us perfect.
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