Building a Palace

I recently bought a compilation of C.S. Lewis' more famous works.  I just read The Great Divorce and I can't wait to read the rest of the book.  I heard a quote by C. S. Lewis several years ago that I have never forgotten, and I was excited to see if I could find it in my new book.  I am happy to say I did find it in Mere Christianity.
C.S. Lewis says,

 "Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to rebuild that house.  At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.  He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.  But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.  What on earth is He up to?  The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of--throwing out a new wing her, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.  You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.  He intends to come and live in it Himself."

I love that quote, and  I thought it went so well with our Sunday School lesson yesterday.  We are studying Jeremiah right now.  In chapter 18 of Jeremiah, the Lord told Jeremiah to go to the potter's house and there he would speak to him.  Jeremiah went to the potter's house and watched the potter make a piece of pottery on his potter's wheel.  The first piece of pottery the potter made was flawed, so he remoulded the clay into a "vessel" that was good.  As Jeremiah watched this, the Lord spoke to him saying,

"O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? ... Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel." (Jeremiah 18:6)

The Lord has the power to mold us into something better.  We can only go so far on our own.  We need Christ to make us perfect.  C.S. Lewis also said, "... the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal."

 I have the tendency to think that I know what things are best for me, even though I don't always, I have weaknesses I don't want to work on, and  I have trials I don't want to endure.  I can't make myself perfect.  I am too weak, too lazy and too much of a coward.  It's comforting to know that Christ will not settle for anything less then the best for me.

President Heber C. Kimball said,

"There are many vessels that are destroyed after they have been moulded and shaped.  Why?  Because they are not contented with the shape the potter has given them, but straightaway put themselves into a shape to please themselves; therefore they are beyond understanding what God designs, and they destroy themselves by the power of their own agency.  [These people] have to go through a great many modelings and shapes, then... have to be glazed and burned; and even in the burning, some vessels crack." (in Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer [1981], 270).

I need to be humble, obedient, and trust him when he says that all things shall be for my good.  And,  if I put my trust in Christ he will be about his work, and his work is to build a Palace.