IS IT A BOON OR IS IT A BANE?

[This is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of January 19, 2014.]

There's a line in Rudyard Kipling's poem, If, about treating victory and defeat the same. I'm told it is over the players' door that leads out onto the tennis courts at Wimbledon...something about being able to meet victory or defeat and "treating those imposters the same."

That pretty much answers one of the trickier questions in life: Is it a boon or is it a bane? The answer is, both. The answer is, neither. It just is. In getting to that acceptance, I'm reminded of the line in the country song about being an old lump of coal "but I'm going to be a diamond some day." Bane to boon.

I love the line in the Introduction to God Calling: "...He will not remove the gold from the crucible until all the dross has gone...." It goes on to say, "...you are taking the glorious shape of your true self which His eye alone has foreseen."

If that is true, and if we're seeing ugly in our life right this minute, we need only remember to turn it around a tish...lift it up...view it from another angle. Look at it through God's eyes. When we're seeing ugly, we're just seeing the dross that is already in the process of being removed. Lest we forget, it is in the process of being removed by God. If we work with him, we walk free...if not, alone again, naturally.

Coal has the same splendor as gold...it's just not completed yet. Same as you and me.

Thank you.