Have you ever had a sense of privilege as you watched a modern craftsman at work. I watched and listened once as skilfully the crafts person took an intricately assembled piece of kit apart and manipulated it so it would do what it was designed for. There was a time when I would never have used the words ‘craftsman’ to describe an IT engineer, but I would now. This chap knew the most complex things about the programming and with seamless actions he reached in to the heart of the machine and fixed the problem. Because I was interested he explained how Igot it into a mess, how he fixed it and why I needed to behave differently. Mostly patience!
Faith can be similar to this in experience. Many people of faith, when in a mess, call in the master craftsman through prayer. This can be painful because God often reaches deep inside to deal with the heart of a problem. The pain is often the truth of our part in creating the problem. My IT man left me alone until next time but Jesus always offers to stay. In Psalm 139 there is a great prayer: ‘search me, O God and know my heart’. When David a boy hero, shepherd, murderer, adulterer,and then king wrote this he most certainly knew that God had full knowledge of him, yet David invites the search anyway.
This is one of those prayers in which we say ‘let there be no pretense in my encounter with God. It’s a cry for authenticity, honesty and unrestricted love. Try it.
Rob Wykes 