Lily work

Oswald Chambers has been one of my devotional companions over many years.  His daily thoughts are often surprising as well as stimulating. One day this week he focused on a verse in 1 Kings. 7:19 in a way that I could never have imagined. It's a detail in the building of Solomon's temple. The capitals on the top of the pillars in the portico were in the shape of lilies..

The lily work added nothing to the strength of the building: many would notice the strength and the majesty of the whole building, but the inspiration of it all was in the detail, in the 'lily work'.  In architecture it is not so much the massive strength that counts as the finely proportioned ornament, and that is never obtrusive. If we look at men and women who have been long at work for God and have been going through chastening, we notice that they have lost their individual harshness....but they have acquired something else - the most exquisite 'lily work' in their lives, and this after all is the thing most like Jesus Christ.  It is the quiet, undisturbable Divinity that is characteristic of Jesus, not aggressiveness, and the same is true of God's children. 

There's a fair amount of unavoidable chastening at the moment.  I wonder what might be happening in our lives - are there lost characteristics?  And might there be any 'lily work'?