Stripping the Old Thing

When Jason and I were newly married we supped at a farmhouse dinning room table, an acquisition of mine from a garage sale instigated by the need for cheap items while furnishing an apartment during college years earlier.  We both liked the table except for it's awful red hued finish, so we set about stripping the old thing.  The old varnish did not relinquish it's right to color the wood easily.  After a week of working on the table nightly dutifully applying the chemical stripper and scraping off the bubbled gunk, we could see the glimmer of beauty beneath.  Another week's hard labor was spent sanding the said table by hand first with gritty rough paper that gave way to finer and finer grade.  Close to finished the table was more beautiful than it had ever been but the wood grain, it's natural form with nothing to intensify the beauty of delicate lines swirling onto knots intricately numbering the years given to the tree it was milled from, was almost unremarkable.  The first drop of linseed oil brought all that veiled beauty into focus.  Gently we rubbed oil into each board.  The created thing intensified and made clear.  Detail upon hidden detail unclouded, luminous.

I have been that table, though in which phase of the stripping I am slightly unsure.  Whether God is still using strong chemicals to strip painfully away the gunk that has accumulated over time or if He, in His great wisdom, has already donned glove and sanding block I can not quite tell.  A thing worked on rarely has the insight to rightly discern it's own progress.  Scraping and sanding feel very similar to the soul until it is complete and memory recalls the slight change in shape of the stripping away, a hard steel edge versus the many faceted grit of sand.  If I were to hazard a guess however,  I think God has pulled out his stock of sanding supplies to use on me, not the fine grit mind you but past the smelly chemicals except perhaps in corners where old things hold deeper on.  In those places God takes extra time being absolutely sure the old varnish doesn't cling to the cracks;  those places hurt most intensely but are made the more beautiful for it.  

God has spiritually been stripping the old things from me over the recent years.  The transition from hard steel to grit of sand, I believe, has been marked by several things the most visible being the physical stripping of old things.  There is change with the prospect of tremendous growth when one can do nothing but lay about.  Bitterness and frustration threaten but I know what the unveiled beauty of that common farmhouse table looked like.  How much more so a prized and favored creation thought of and beloved from before time itself?

And I know when the rough stripping is finished the finer work begins.  The sanding process requires patience and an eye for perfection.  Timing is tantamount.  Linseed applied too soon and some beauty is left unseen, uncovered, veiled and hidden from view.  I have patience yet for this fine work when it begins if it hasn't already started.  And what will be my linseed?  What will God add to bring out the beauty He created in me?  A Divine Rag soaked in His great grace lovingly, gently applied till all comes to Light.