I liked it....

Due to the fact I am short on time, also because I can't write half as well as he can, and because it's really not worth your time to read my silly ramblings; I'm going post this written by Brian Colmery- ***read it***

Making a Sword

So I’ve gotten into the nasty habit of asking God to do whatever needs to be done to make me the man He needs me to be. This includes using the words "wreck my life," "do whatever you need to do," and "mess me up if you have to" - basically all the phrases that come with the desire for God to move mightily regardless of my personal sense of comfort and superficial happiness. This, of course, is a really stupid thing to pray. I’m just starting to feel it, just starting to see it happen, and peaking over the horizon is what I knew was sneaking up behind my good intentions—a significant amount of pain.

God reaching in and changing your life is never comfortable, and it never comes in such a way that you can see what He’s going for. God uses circumstances like a blacksmith uses a hammer, and I don’t think the metal ever knows it’s becoming a sword when it’s being beaten, thrown into a fire, and then drowned. In the same way I don’t know what I’m becoming. I know what I want, what my heart desires, and I know I don’t have it. There are times in every man’s life when feelings swoop down on him, lighting up caverns of longing in his heart that have never been explored. They’re deep enough to get lost in, and vast enough to make him wonder if they ever end—or if they might not go on forever, and every day is one of either ignorance or of discovering new pockets of emptiness until life has finally had it’s way with him. Pain comes from odd places, but, when their masks are chipped away, grief and loss and depression and loneliness are all the same creature: hopelessness. The ghost that lurks behind every conscious thought of pain is the out-of-focus vision of a life that doesn’t get better. Ever. A quiet whisper, a gentle wind that paints a life where the pain never goes away. Where you never will be loved, or, maybe worse, where the love you have packed up inside will never get the chance to stretch out and come to rest on someone else. Where nothing will patch the hole left when a loved one passed. Where no one seems to be able to really, really know you. Where you are, with finality, alone.

A man can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel in the same way that the metal can’t see the sword. Yet the metal is painfully aware of one thing—someone is swinging the hammer. I know too, in the midst of my own shaping, that God is holding the hammer. And He is the light at the end of my tunnel. He will finish what He has begun, and it is that assurance that banishes any ghost that dares beset His child.

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah