JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

pictures and stories from the water’s edge

JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools header image 2

Diamond cutting

November 15th, 2003 · No Comments

The other day, as I was praying about a situation, a relationship, that was heavy on my heart, I sensed the words “diamond cutting” coming to mind. I realized that I didn’t know much about the process of cutting diamonds so I looked it up on the Web and found this site at How Stuff Works

I learned that diamond cutters use four basic techniques: cleaving, sawing, bruting and polishing. Cement, lasers, steel blades, phospor-bronze blades, a lathe and a wheel are used to shape the diamond. A “sharp groove is carved” into it, a “sharp blow” is used to split it, a saw cuts through it and it is pressed against a wheel. The diamond is cut and shaped on its planes of weakness. And often another diamond is used to carve, rub and smoothe the stone.

Diamond cutting sounds like an intense process. Brutal even. And I sensed, that perhaps God was speaking to me, saying that we were indeed in the process of diamond cutting. That this painful situation, being hit on our planes of weakness, was His way of shaping a jewel. His way of carving our hearts, our hardness.

The word diamond comes from the Greek meaning “I tame” or “I subdue”.
“Diamond” comes from the Greek adamao, transliterated as “adamao,” “I tame” or “I subdue.” The adjective “adamas” was used to describe the hardest substance known, and eventually became synonymous with diamond.

Diamond is the hardest substance known. And it can take a lot to subdue the stone. To shape it to its final form of beauty requires force, violence against it and through it. Being split and sawn into pieces. And sometimes it takes other diamonds to cut a diamond.

Tags: Uncategorized