In Robert Ozment’s But God Can, there is a story of a woman who was suffering a terrible tragedy. In bitter desperation, she said, “I wish I’d never been made.” A discerning friend said, “My dear, you are not fully made yet. You are only being made, and this is the Maker’s process.” A good observation.

Someone asked a small boy who had just come from Sunday school, “Son, can you tell me who made you?” Digging a toe in the ground and squinting an eye, he courteously replied, “To tell the truth, mister, I ain’t done yet.” True. Individually speaking, if we stay yielded, God continues to mold us for a lifetime. None wishes for tragedy, yet most of those who have accomplished significant things have been “made” by their tragedies. They conquered in spite of them, not because of the absence of them.

• Milton was stricken with blindness before he wrote the incomparable Paradise Lost.

• Beethoven wrote his most famous music after he became deaf.

• Who hasn't been inspired by the incredible accomplishments of Helen Keller?

Maybe things are going rough for you. You wouldn’t choose these circumstances. They are not pleasant. But, they may be the making of you. As someone said, “Where souls are being tried and tested, there God is hewing out pillars for His temple!” (Barnett).

Congregationally speaking, God “ain’t done” with His church yet. Things have not always gone as we might have wished, and there are still things that need attention to become the church we can be—the church God wants us to be. Even those programs which are strong and productive can grow by adding new people... God’s working on us...we must continue to submit to His work, look for doors of opportunity, repent of mistakes, and “keep on keeping on.”

Will you help? Let me be a part of the solution...Let me be a worker bee and not a drone...Let me do my part, and then just a little bit more...Let my love for God move me to do things for Him I’d never do for anyone else...

We ain’t done yet. We’re still in the process of being made.

“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” —2 Corinthians 3:18