As many of you might know, I like to build guitars. Not fancy acoustic models, but solid body electric guitars. You see I am too cheap to buy new ones, so I started buying used ones and refinishing them. But then it got to expensive to buy used ones so I started buying parts and putting my own together. I did a bass for my daughter, and made a telecaster for myself and my other daughter, and I am in the middle of Stratocaster for myself.
What I am finding in finishing these guitars is that any mistake you make is amplified in the finish. Bump it with your watch and put a small scratch on the wood, yep it will show through on the finish. Sand it uneven and it will show up when you put your shiney finish on it. It is painstaking work, sand on and sand off, paint and primer and sand some more. And then when you go to put everything together you have to be real careful with the screwdriver, and the soldering iron or you can mess things up pretty good. What is frustrating is even if you get that guitar perfect, in the course of playing it, you sometimes ding it and all your effort for a perfect instrument are thrown out the window. I even had one that broke a string and the string whipped the face of the guitar and made a mark. So why put all the effort into making it perfect from the start. Well I think it comes to the "creation" gene in us.
That is the same gene that GOD has. He created us perfect but sin came in and damaged his perfect creation. So GOD provided a way to cover our imperfections with his son JESUS. Now when I look at a guitar that has been played a lot, and has all sorts of nicks and dings on it, I see character instead of blemishes. I think GOD looks at us the same way, he sees our character over our blemishes. So next time you are being dented and dinged in the course of life, remember that GOD still covers our flaws, but the world is able to see all of our character.
What I am finding in finishing these guitars is that any mistake you make is amplified in the finish. Bump it with your watch and put a small scratch on the wood, yep it will show through on the finish. Sand it uneven and it will show up when you put your shiney finish on it. It is painstaking work, sand on and sand off, paint and primer and sand some more. And then when you go to put everything together you have to be real careful with the screwdriver, and the soldering iron or you can mess things up pretty good. What is frustrating is even if you get that guitar perfect, in the course of playing it, you sometimes ding it and all your effort for a perfect instrument are thrown out the window. I even had one that broke a string and the string whipped the face of the guitar and made a mark. So why put all the effort into making it perfect from the start. Well I think it comes to the "creation" gene in us.
That is the same gene that GOD has. He created us perfect but sin came in and damaged his perfect creation. So GOD provided a way to cover our imperfections with his son JESUS. Now when I look at a guitar that has been played a lot, and has all sorts of nicks and dings on it, I see character instead of blemishes. I think GOD looks at us the same way, he sees our character over our blemishes. So next time you are being dented and dinged in the course of life, remember that GOD still covers our flaws, but the world is able to see all of our character.
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