The other day our team helped MaryEve, the cook here, make lunch. She assigned me the task of sorting the beans and set a big bag of bright green, brown, and white beans in front of me. She showed me how to pick up a handful and take out the impurities and bad ones. Slowly and methodically, I did the best I could to sift through enough beans to feed fifty people, annoyed at the thought of not getting every rotten one out.
After they were sifted once, we poured them into a pot of cool water. Again, she showed me how to sort and give them the final cleansing. She stuck her hands into the pot, rubbed a handful of the beans vigorously together, shook them all around, and took her hands out. Quickly more impurities and bad beans floated to the top and she grabbed them and threw them out. I spent the next several minutes doing the same.
Sifting through them, I began to think about how similar our lives are to this process. We sort through our lives, picking out impurities as we go. We do the best we can the first time, but some things slide through unnoticed. It is not until we are made uncomfortable– shaken up and rubbed vigorously, that the impurities become more noticeable.
That is so much of what my life is about right now. I've been committed to following Jesus for several years now, so I feel that He has done a lot of the initial sorting. But the process is far from over. I am now in the pot. Being shaken up, stretched beyond my limits, and uncomfortable in order that He can continue to separate me from my flesh. I am in the pot of circumstances I wouldn't choose, with people I wouldn't choose, and serving in ways that I wouldn't choose. But He is with me, and He loves me too much to let me stay the way that I am. He loves me enough to continue working in my life, to take away ME so that there can be more of HIM.
And for that, I am forever grateful.
