The mantel clock that I rescued from a flea market hums and rattles quietly over the fireplace. Last year it sat forlornly on a jumbled counter among other flotsam. Its wooden casing looked like it had a skin disease, with its finish all cracked and peeling. Its face and inside works dangled collapsed inside. Its tag said twenty dollars. I took it to the desk. Would they take fifteen? A call, and the clock was mine.
I took it home and sanded down the finish, a surprisingly quick job. Then I put a coat of clear urethane (satin) on and was stunned at the instant mahogany beauty. When this was dry I reset the works and secured them in place. As good, almost, as new. But a “new” probably at least seventy years old, maybe more.
So now it sits on the mantel, rattling away, a sort of pulse or breathing hardly heard except in the quiet of the morning while I have my coffee.
a sort of pulse or breathing hardly heard except in the quiet of the morning
I am like that clock, redeemed, refurbished, reset and set up, plugged in to the power that flows from a source inconceivably strong, yet which moderates its power to my ability to receive and apply it. The hands of the clock faithfully register the time: what do my hands faithfully register? What does my face and my casing say about the One Who did the work?
The God of all grace has taken us out of the scrap heap of life and breathed new life into us for a purpose. Two scriptures: Philippians 1:6: “he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ,” and 2:13 “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
How that works out in your life and in mine is between us and God. He does not, and will not, stop until that work is finished for us (but it will go on with others). We are not our own: we are God’s mantel clocks, made to faithfully “tell the time” as His power flows through us, quietly rattling along, however old we may be, “until the day of Jesus Christ.”