Diamond In The Rough

I have been thinking about diamonds today, specifically the fact that diamonds are mined out of the dust of the earth in unchiseled form. Their beauty evident but raw and only partially revealed. The jeweler takes the unfinished stone and cuts it into a symmetric glistening gem with great value. How similar to diamonds we are as God's children. We are buried and blinded from light released by God who comes searching for us. We are valuable to him (why I don't know). He begins to chip and cut at our rough form to shape the beauty underneath. He often uses the community of believers as his instruments in this chiseling, or the occurences of life. Either way he refines and polishes us until we eventually become the creation he desires. How often we try to clean ourselves up in our pride while we are in our uncut state, wanting to be the "controllers" of what we become. We believe our worth is dependent on our own endeavers at polishing the dirt away, and we cringe and writhe when God or others, as instruments in his hand, work at our flaws...not realizing that we cannot become diamonds except in the deliberate hands of the Almighty.