l'éléphant

I was in the car with my mom, listening to the radio....and this speaker was talking about the sculpting of a famous statue. It reminded me of this one joke...

"How do you carve an elephant out of marble?"
"Well, you get a block of marble, and you start chipping away at everything that doesn't look like an elephant"

::tehe::

(image from amazon.com)

But the speaker was talking about how God is the sculptor, chipping away at us.

And I got to thinking. As God is carving me, am I letting Him chip away at everything that "doesn't look like an elephant"?

Jesus says "Be holy, as I am holy". We are to reflect Christ - but are we letting God purge us of the things that don't reflect Him, so that when the work is finished, all you will see is Christ?

Brother Lawrence, in The Practice of the Presence of God (amazing book) says (on attaining spiritual fulfillment)

To accomplish this, it is necessary for the heart to be emptied of everything that would offend God. He wants to possess our hearts completely. Before any work can be done in our souls, God must be totally in control...we need to abandon everything that isn't of God. Doesn't He deserve this and much more?

Like I was talking about in this post...there are so many things that take captive of our hearts instead of God.

What does your elephant look like so far? I don't know about you, but mine still has a lot of lumps of non-elephant-looking marble...