God's making diamonds

Diamonds. For the most part they are associated with engagements, weddings, anniversaries and pleads for forgiveness. Marilyn Monroe proclaimed that diamonds are a "girl's best friend" in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, De Beers claims that a "diamond is forever." Take your pick. The world has a lot to say about this precious gem, but do you know how these stones are formed? Do you know the process a diamond goes thru before it finds its way into a blue Tiffany box?

Diamonds are formed at high-pressure, high-temperature conditions within the Earth's mantle, about 100 miles below the Earth's surface. It is not known how long it takes a diamond to form exactly, but Cate Lineberry with the Smithsonian magazine writes that "diamonds may start to grow and then there may be an interruption for some reason – a change in conditions, temperature, pressure, source of carbon, whatever—and they could sit for millions, hundreds of million of years, and then start growing again." Interesting. So, what we see in the stores, on a finger may have gone through a harder process to make it to those places than merely being unearthed. They had to go through a process that continuously applied pressure, heat to them, and what results from this is often times a breathtaking gemstone...a precious commodity.

Isn't this how life, our growth in Christ often goes? It's through times of great pressure, heat and a period of constant change or interruption that we find we have been transformed the most? Don't we too continue to grow? Isn't it when we feel as though we are getting it from all angles, above, below, side-to-side, that we begin to see our bare minerals being transformed into a precious commodity? Notice, too, that Lineberry doesn't say that after all of this pressure, all of this heat that the diamond is now worthless, useless...rather, it becomes a beautiful, coveted, and sought after jewel.

I am in the process of being made into a diamond right now...or at least that's how it seems. Pressure and heat from all sides are crushing me...refining me....hopefully making me into a better version of the raw materials Jesus gave me and is now re-shaping. I know that this time of refinement is for my benefit and to God's glory, but that doesn't have to mean that I like it all of the time. It hurts. It's painful. It's lonely and causes me to weep. It has also caused me to cry out to Jesus in the midst of the incredible pressure. I know that our Lord is faithful, He is just, and He will never leave me nor forsake me. He is always with me and seeks to only give me what is good for me. So, I have to ultimately trust that He knows better than I. That He knows what I can and cannot bear. That He knows what is best for me. That He knows that at the end of this I, like a diamond, will refract light...but it will be the Light of life, the Light of man, the Light that casts out all darkness. And so I will go thru this. I will survive...because it will bring glory to His name.