Given New Life.
When we owned the old general store in Red Range, NSW, as part of the heritage restoration I rebuilt the old blacksmith's shop alongside the building. Elderly neighbours had told me that the original forge was made from an old disk ploughshare and so I set about reconstructing it.
Fortuitously, the long-since abandoned rubbish tip on the village common provided lots of scrap iron, including a large circular disk ploughshare and a length of railway iron from which to make an anvil. I used the newly-made forge to reconstruct some hand-made tools to go with it.
I would put a rusty, cold, dull piece of iron into the fire, and, after awhile, take out that identical piece of iron out of the fire, but now it was bright and glowing and I could give it a new life and fashion it into something useful.
Philippians 3:20-21 says, "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."
When we die our bodies are consigned to the grave like junk on a rubbish tip, dead, lifeless and valueless. But the resurrection assures us that, in the fullness of time, the master Blacksmith will convert this lifeless trash into something bright and glowing and give it a new life.
(1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 KJV) But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15) For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16) For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17) Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18) Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
n Lionel Hartley
