God Invented The Conversion Process

God by design converts stuff.

I grew up in the foothills of the Rockies near Pincher Creek Alberta which is known for its wind. It is the second windiest place in Canada, following St. Johns, Newfoundland. On the farm we used to have a windmill that generated electricity. It was removed when electric power lines where run to this part of rural Alberta. Today windmills are back in a big way and they are seen lined up on crest of the foothills.

The wind is caught in these windmills, and then converted into electricity. The wind that is an irritant to many, and seemingly useless, can be converted into something much more beneficial.

I have always been curious about how things are made and a television show I enjoy watching is How It’s Made. It is a show about conversion. Converting raw materials in to useful items for our everyday life. If we look around we see conversion everywhere. The metal in my car was converted from iron ore in the ground. The plastic that makes my cup comes from the byproducts of petroleum refining. Glass used to be silica, soda ash and limestone, but through a process using extreme heat it is converted. Cement was crushed rock and now is converted into a building.

The next time you pick up some apple juice at the grocery store, consider the conversion that took place. We can drink apple juice without any fear of contamination. Yet an apple tree takes the rain from the puddles that are filled with bacteria, adds the soil nutrients and sunshine and then by God’s design converts this all into an apple.

Growing up on a farm I marveled how a cow eating green grass converts it to white milk. Our cows were eating unsanitary grass in the pasture. Cows have four compartments in their stomach. They eat, chew and swallow the grass. Then they will bring the grass back up and chew it some more and add digestive saliva to it. It repeats this four times before completes the process. The cow is a conversion machine, converting green grass into milk.

God’s design is conversion, and not just with plants and animals, but He does that with people and the challenges in our lives.

In Psalm 30:11 we read: “You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy.” And in Isaiah 61:3 it says: “To all who mourn in Israel he will give: beauty for ashes; joy instead of mourning; praise instead of heaviness. For God has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for his own glory.”

God will convert our mourning into joy, our ashes into beauty, our mess into a message, but it does require us to give it to Him. We can hold on to our past pain if we want to. Nobody’s going to force us to let it go. But we can’t hold on to both the painful past and find God’s joy at the same time. We have to make a choice.

God will convert our mourning into joy, our ashes into beauty, our mess into a message, but it does require us to give it to Him.

Our challenge today is to bring our mourning, our tears or the ashes of our dreams to God, and allow Him to literally convert them into something into joy.