By Wendy Greiner Lefko

Some of my favorite memories as a child come from the week our family would spend each summer at Montrose Bible Conference. I vividly recall the children’s meetings where we’d sing songs, hear Bible stories, play games, do crafts and all sorts of fun stuff. But my favorite part was doing ceramics. There was a huge table full of plain white ceramic figures from which we could choose. We could pick the colors (albeit generally just one or two colors), and have the joy of painting our treasured pieces all by ourselves as the week progressed. For a young child this was big stuff! The best part came at the end of the week when we completed our figurines and left them on a big table to dry. To me they looked pretty good, not perfect or detailed, but completely acceptable to young eyes. I’ll never forget, however, the next morning when we entered the auditorium for the final day of meetings. There on display were all the works of art! Somehow they looked a bit different than the night before! The animal figures were now neatly detailed with delicate eyes, noses and mouths. Bunnies had pink ears that hadn’t been there before, puppies and kitties had big black eyes that sparkled in the light. Mistakes had been carefully and lovingly corrected with fresh paint. Best of all, a fresh coat of shiny glaze covered each and every precious figurine making them gleam almost as brightly as the smiles of us kids who proudly picked up our now perfect masterpieces. As we carefully carried away our works of art to show to our waiting parents, I don’t know if we truly understood, appreciated, or credited the many hours of labor that had been lovingly put into those pieces by the teacher’s helpers the night before. They had quietly taken our work and merely perfected it. It was a joy for us to take home a beautiful figurine that we kids seemed to have no trouble taking complete credit for!

I believe the same holds true in our lives as God’s children. He gives us a task to do and we do the best we can. We may look at it afterwards with our blind pride and think we did a pretty good job. Then when we’re not looking, the Lord comes along and quietly touches it with His supernatural grace and holiness, turning it into something more beautiful than we ever could have imagined! Only then do we realize how weak our best efforts are apart from His hand of mercy. The very best we have to offer pales in comparison to the glory with which He covers our work and the details He lovingly adds to make His work complete. His love erases our mistakes and His masterful hand skillfully applies a fresh coat of compassion to make our service for Him gleam like the sun! But all these final touches can only be offered when we place our work on His table and allow Him to touch it up for His honor and glory. Then we must remember to Whom all the credit is due!