GOD’S MASTERPIECE

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this special announcement.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10, NKJV)

Fear not, Part III of my sermon transcription is coming, but I had an encounter with a woman at the Laundromat last night that bears telling. I mentioned the encounter to my wife, but apparently someone else needs to hear it. Why else would I be awakened an hour before my doggie alarm with an urge to sit at my computer and type?

Pat and I, after spending a precautionary week of quarantine, were finally able to take our beach camping laundry to the Laundromat. Much of our clothes, sheets and blankets were sand filled and it would have taken many loads to wash the pile, so we took advantage of the large capacity washers and dryers at the local Laundromat. Unfortunately, one of the heavy blankets was being stubborn and refused to dry. We tossed it into a dryer by itself while we folded the rest of the clothes.

Yep, you guessed it. We finished folding, packed up and left, leaving that blanket behind, which actually was Pat’s daughter’s, the one who contracted COVID, causing our quarantine. We had taken her bedding with us to wash. We had taken everything home and went to get a bite to eat. When we got home from that, I was getting something out of the truck while Pat went inside. She came bursting out of the front door a moment later, as if the house was on fire or something had happened to her daughter or one of the dogs. No, it was to tell me that we had left the blanket behind. I almost had a heart attack, the way she burst through the door.

I returned to the Laundromat. It was difficult seeing into the dryers we had been using because a woman was in the middle of emptying her clothes into the dryers above the ones we had used, and the baskets were partially blocking my view and access. As best as I could tell the blanket was not there. I approached the nearby attendants and asked if anyone had turned in the blanket. The woman who was blocking the dryers overheard me and asked if it was a white blanket, because there was one in the dryer behind one of her baskets. It was the left-behind blanket.

She moved her basket and as I was retrieving the blanket she said, “I guess you couldn’t see around my fat ass.” Now, she was a tall woman, over 6 feet tall, and I would say a little overweight, but nowhere near the way she described herself. My first comment was, “No, your basket was blocking my view.” I paused, then continued by telling her she should never think or say such negative things about herself. It was the wrong attitude. We were each created in God’s image. I thanked her and walked away.

We live in a time where many are unsatisfied with how they look. They try to change what God has created through diet, plastic surgery, chemical treatments, etc. They become obsessed with change. It’s one thing to treat our bodies in a wholesome way and try to take care of ourselves, but many go too far. There’s a difference between maintenance and change. God created each of us in His image, yet no two of us look the same. Even identical twins have discernable differences.

Embrace what God has created you to be, not what society tells you to be. Job, the most righteous man alive at the time, according to God, was attacked by Satan and wished he had never been born. Don’t let society do that to you.  You are God’s Masterpiece! Lay hod of that truth.

Have a blessed weekend!