Articles
Seeing Potential
Useless?
When I told an older friend of ours that we were looking for a toy box, she offered us an old wooden chest she kept in her basement.
Seeing its sad condition—holding water and split in two all the way around—I was not too impressed and didn’t take it with me.
But when I told Sara, she wanted to see for herself. After an inspection, she decided we could use it after all.
Dried out, glued, and braced, it became a dandy toy box, and some years later, a rustic blanket keeper. Over four decades later we still have it.
First impressions can be so wrong. I saw water and a broken box. Sara saw potential.
Hopeless?
God sees potential too. He sees not only sinners, but the future inhabitants of heaven they can become.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.[a] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
“. . . for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8).
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. . .” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
What Christ can do
Jesus could take Simon the impulsive fisherman and mold him into Peter—apostle, elder, and leading spokesman for Christ.
He could transform Matthew, the despised tax collector, into the author of the Gospel that bears his name.
He could turn Saul, the violent persecutor of churches, into Paul, the leading planter of churches and author of one-fourth of the New Testament.
Having done all this and so much more, what might He do with you and me?
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
