A Touch of the Master's hand with a Twist

Most people are familiar with the popular poem "The Touch of the Master's Hand" by Myra Welsh. I love that poem because it illustrates so wonderfully the truth that we can all be masterpieces with our Father in Heaven's help. I know that is true and I have definitely seen that in my life. However, one experience in my life has shown me another way to look at the touch of a master's hand.

When I was nine years old, my family purchased an acre and a quarter of land in Espanola, New Mexico and set out to build a House. The first step in the process of building a house is the foundation. For our foundation, we needed cement.  My father is a do-it- yourself man. Dwight Shrute in the popular TV show, The Office, made the comment, “I never tip anyone for doing something I could have done myself.” My father is the same way, except that he just won’t pay for the service at all if he believes he can do it himself. Therefore when it came to pouring cement, it was not a matter of calling a cement truck to come with wet cement and let them pour it into frames. No, we not only built the frames, but we mixed and poured the cement as well.

We used an old rickety cement mixer, passed down from my grandfather. It had been sitting in the front yard of his farm, unused and broken for at least ten years before my dad found a use for it, and adopted the thing. In order to get it running, we employed the use of a new belt for the pullies, welded on a new handle, and, finally, installed a new plug. When my dad was finished, it was adorned with duct and electrical tape every couple of feet along the cord, and a new handle that consisted of nothing more than a metal piece sufficient to do the job of tipping the mixer over to expel the cement. Now I am not going to lie, I was not convinced that it would work. Yet I gathered around the mixer with the rest of my family and pretended confidence, like my brothers seemed to have. To my surprise, as soon as my father plugged the mixer in, it roared to life.  By roar, I mean more of a wheeze. It would make almost a complete rotation before pitching itself forward as if on uneven legs with a shuddering noise that, quite frankly, left me wondering if it had been fixed. Even so, it was a hallelujah moment for my nine-year-old self. This mixer had been standing in Grandpa’s yard for as long as I could remember, framed by weeds and used as just another broken piece of machinery, like the old tractors, on which my brothers and I could play. Now, at the touch of my father’s magical hands, it was rumbling along. I knew at that moment that my dad could fix anything, even if it was a little doubtful as to how fixed it was.

My dad was able to take something unusable and create a piece of machinery that allowed for us to build a strong foundation and ultimately a wonderful house. The twist I see in this story as opposed to the poem, is that in this story the master fixed something for me to use rather than just me. I have quoted the scripture found in Heleman 5:12 but I am going to quote it again.

"And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundations; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall."                                                                                     

I noticed the other day the phrase "ye must build your foundation".  Christ is the rock that we build our foundations on. But how do we manage to pour that cement? Through the cement mixers that the lord has placed in our path. Every commandment that He gives allows you and me to have a tool to build our sure foundation and strong house of faith.

The Lord does not just make us masterpieces but he often gives us masterpiece situations for growth. Every Sunday we can attend church and feed on spiritual strength. Every day we can read our scriptures and have a daily prayer with him. Every trail that backs us up to our wall of faith. These are the pieces of duct tape and pulley belts that make up the mixer from which we can pour our foundation.