Because Of The Gold.

To see God digging in the dirt is shocking at first. He digs deep into the hardness. Shoulder and back muscles stiffen with repeated effort. The dirt caves in. He starts over. His hands blister. An occasional tear traces down His dust-covered face. Never resting He does not lose the determined urgency in His eyes. When He makes notable progress, a smile breaks like the dawn. 

He evidently knows something that we don´t. What is it that He seeks?

He seeks what was lost—Divine glory that once rested upon creation. We see the crust of filthiness and dross covering us…God tenaciously sees the gold. Though lost to our view, He believes it is still below the surface.  It is valuable to Him. He is willing to risk all for it.

God drew up a plan of salvation based on the belief that His Son´s cruel death would not be in vain. God trusted that at least one sin-tainted heart would submit to the power of love and grace and be made perfect. God trusted that the pure gold in us could be found and restored. He believed we could be renewed. The Divine belief in us is beyond our understanding. But it makes sense to Him. He never considers that His ongoing sacrifice is for naught…because of the gold, because of the treasure, because of the pearl of great price that He loves, because of you.

He knows our capacity for failure. He also knows our capacity to shine and excel. He will trust us until we begin to identify more with the gold that is visible to Him, than with the dross that keeps us weak and unconfident. His trust (and the pain we feel when we break that trust) will remind us that we are called to perfection…it will also remind us that He who called is faithful to perform. If He does not stalwartly believe in us, He cannot transform us. Thus, His heart will submit to being battered, for there is no other way for us to truly grow and for the gold to start emerging.

It's not a game of "make-believe" or "pretend" for Him. God actually sees the gold in us. He put it there. He glimpses it and says, “Let us trust this soul as if it were entirely worthy of our trust. Let us confidently believe in what this dross-covered mess was created to be. Let us trust in order to make what is weak, strong…what is dirty, into gold. And presently our trust will make this soul absolutely trustworthy.”   

When I see God digging in the dirt, I have to believe too. I have to accept His absolute belief. There WILL be hearts that allow God´s love to pull them from the mire and purify them as gold.