Diamond in the Rough

We had a lesson today which I think was on adversity.  (I was late and missed most of it.)  It was the standard, from what I did hear, you know--Why does God allow bad things to  happen?  Chastening, refiner's fire--we need to learn and get stronger yada yada yada.

One of the example's though, made me think.  A friend was talking about what it takes to turn normal carbon into a diamond and what a treasure a diamond is.  I'm weird, it's a given, but all I could think about was:  " I wonder what it takes to turn something into carbon."

What is carbon made out of?  What did something have to go through to become carbon--the thing that everything is made out of?  With the whole eternal perspective,  carbon isn't the beginning, and a diamond isn't the end.  There is something more basic than carbon and something more beautiful and precious than diamonds.  And if we were to sit down and analyze, is a diamond really more valuable than coal?  Can it heat?  Give off light?  Generate electricity?  What percentage of God's children ever even get to see a diamond?

Then there's the perspective I have of my dad working in the diamond industry.  Industrial diamonds.  He worked for a company that made the drill bits for oil wells--diamond drill bits, that would cut through the core of the earth better and faster than anything else. He had a little one on his key chain for years.

Are those diamonds as special as the ones that have been cut and polished?  They are diamonds.  They aren't still considered carbon.   I remember when he brought home a black diamond.  It just looked like a tiny piece of coal, but perfectly square.  I didn't believe him at first when he said it was a diamond.  And my mom has a diamond hourglass with thousands of dollars worth of diamond dust running through it.  Very sparkly and beautiful, but not considered in the same way as something in a baby blue box from Tiffany's.

I don't know, but I think the point I am getting at is that:   I don't care if I'm carbon now.  Carbon is a really good thing and it came from somewhere.  It didn't start out as carbon.  It went through something already to get where it is, and even if I'm not on my way to the shiny kind of diamond that everyone recognizes as valuable, I am valuable and God sees me that way.  Even if I'm coal, or a drill bit or dust that marks time. Someday I'll see myself the way He sees me--the way He sees all of his obedient children--who are with Him.  Hopefully, I will be white above all that is white and that beats a diamond any day.