I am a woodworker. I like to build things. It engages my brain in a far different way than a week filled with editing, writing, and looking for my phone. It also keeps me from playing in the street.
I am also a perfectionist, which can really be annoying. For the last year I have been building bedroom furniture. As you see in this photo, the bed and end tables are finished, and I am in the throes of building the first of two matching dressers. Even now as I am in the finishing process, I find flaws I simply can’t live with.
My wife steps into the garage and sees me reworking the same section FOR THE FOURTH TIME. She wants to encourage me and says, “It looks fine. No one’s going to notice that but you.”
And that’s just my point. I know the flaw is there. Years from now, every time I open a drawer looking for my phone, that flaw will stare up at me and laugh: “HEY, LOOKIT ME!”
So out come the tools. I will not be laughed at by a piece of red oak lumber.
God created us and He knows every detail of our lives—including every flaw. But unlike this woodworker, God did not put the flaws there. Our flaws are our own doing. We sin; we make stupid, rash decisions that mar us; we rebel against the One who made us.
My wife is right: no one will see those flaws. But I know they’re there. And people do not see all the flaws in my life—but God does.
And God wants to remove those flaws too. Left on its own, my dresser will remain flawed, and if we’re left on our own, we will remain flawed. We can do nothing to remedy our sin.
But God can—and does. The Master Carpenter used two beams of wood formed into a cross to make it possible for us to be rebuilt. Renewed. Every flaw removed. Forgiven.
“If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17).
This 
post supports the study “One Great Creator” in Bible Studies for Life.
A printable version is available to share with others: His Repairs with Wood Are Better Than Mine
Lynn Pryor 