Rough Diamond

He was a diamond

Set deep within a prison

The wall of stone for years

keeping hidden

the innate value stamped there by the Creator.

The sparkling sheen

of unrealised treasure

yet to be seen

by searching eyes, who see better

see deeper, farther, clearer, later

He was cut out

from the bosom of granite,

the tools going deep,

the painful emerging, and it

left him with jagged edges.

Being cut, now he himself cutting

any who would want to touch

the stone still valued, precious.

But the cost to bring out the seeming

value, who could ever pay so much?

One who pursuing and redeeming,

His eye that of a buyer, so refined

saw in the future such 

a gem, there unhewn and undeveloped,

a jewel having only just been mined

So he bought it

from those hardened hands.

A shrewd purchase, costing everything

The distant, rather bigger, purpose

only He could understand.

To carve of this piece from the rock,

something to be highly appraised;

the process begun, the work ongoing

the hammer and chisel

sometimes hurting, sometimes testing

this work of the master Craftsman

done day after day.

And for what? Only for pain,

or just to make life hard?

O in His purposeful grasp to remain

is to one day display the brilliance

of eternal light’s beauty.

To stay and be sharpened

with patience and resilience

Beneath the crushing

and held to the light

means becoming that diamond seen long before

A piece of the earth,

great potential once encrusted

with the accumulation of life,
now revealed, a prized possession

and valued treasure;

now entrusted

to be the unhindered reflection

Of His glory and His pleasure