My architect husband asked me to meet him at a stone yard a few months back to help select a piece of marble for a home he is working on.

As we walked through row after row of the huge slabs of rock, all equally magnificent pieces, I could not get over the variety of beauty that had been created deep within the dark recesses of the earth.

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There it was, all laid out in the light of day, all on display for the world to see and admire. Things that had been made in secret were now visible before my eyes. Things that had been mined at great expense but had been made so easily and effortlessly by our loving, beautiful and creative God were now showcased and sold at a very high price.

I was overcome with awe at such a flamboyant display of God’s handiwork.

“How,” I thought, “did God come up with such variety, patterns, and color?”

Some were so subtle and soft, others so strikingly bold. One looked like compressed butterfly wings that glistened opalescent in the bright light of the sun. Another looked like feathers frozen in stone.

I was overcome with awe at such a flamboyant display of God’s handiwork. And then I began to contemplate: How much more is in the Earth? How much more beauty is there that we will never see, as it is so deep within the heart of terra firma, things made just for his own pleasure and glory?  

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I so needed this outing, this day of experiencing beauty, wonder and delight at the artistic hand of my maker. I felt so loved, as if God himself were saying, “See, I can do things you cannot even dream of!”

I felt as if he had made each one of those huge masterpieces just for me to view that day. 

The timing was incredible. We had been dealing with the aftermath of our daughter’s traumatic accident. She had broken three bones in her neck while on a trip to visit a friend. She had gone surfing, and things went bad — fast. She was thrown over the top of a 9-foot wave, tossed head-first into a shallow sand bar and held under for quite some time.

Thanks be to God, she did not drown, nor was she paralyzed. But still, given her injuries, we felt we were in a blazing furnace of trials, hard-pressed on every side. 

As I looked at these beautiful paintings made of stone, I heard in my inner spirit the Lord say, “This is what I am doing in your soul.”

“What?” I said.

Then I realized — heat and pressure —that is how he created these. Yes! Heat and pressure! 

If only we could crack open each other’s souls to see what God is creating deep within the dark recesses of each one of us. The magnificent stone slabs, marbled with gold and silver and precious jewels, were all wrought by his hand of love. How? By heat and pressure, just like in the natural world. But what a weight of glory they bring when we allow his perfect will to be done in and through them. 

“For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Melissa Overmyer is founder of  Something Greater Ministries in Washington, D.C., and has taught the Bible for more than 30 years.