By David Faust
My granddaughter Abbie teaches pottery classes. Her skillful hands can turn a nondescript lump of clay into a beautiful mug, bowl, teapot, sculpture, vase, or candle holder.
Pottery is an ancient art form. In Genesis 11 people made clay bricks and used them to build the tower of Babel. Hebrew slaves in Egypt made bricks using clay mixed with straw. Job scraped himself with broken pottery to ease his suffering. The potter’s field near Jerusalem became a burial place for foreigners (Matthew 27:7).
The prophet Jeremiah visited a potter’s house and watched the artist work. In those days a potter would put clay on the ground and tread on it with his feet until it reached the right consistency. In a process that required strength and agility, he would throw the clay onto a round stone and turn the wheel with his feet while his hands shaped the clay. Then the artist would bake it in a furnace, apply a shiny glaze, and decorate the finished product with paint.
The Lord compared himself to a skillful potter. He said, “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel” (Jeremiah 18:6).
MEANT TO BE RE-CREATED
While Jeremiah watched, the potter found an imperfection in the clay, so “the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (Jeremiah 18:4). The artist had a particular design in mind and wouldn’t be satisfied until the plan was fulfilled, so he squashed the clay back into a shapeless blob and started over again.
“Clay is a medium that is meant to be re-created,” my granddaughter tells me. “Even if it’s completely hardened, you can make it new with a bit of time, water, and knowledge.” In fact, Abbie says clay that has been properly “reclaimed” is some of her favorite material to work with.
God made us from the dust of the earth. Sin corrupted God’s perfect creation, but his plan was not destroyed. We can be re-created! When it seems like God is being rough with us and smashing us down, his plan is still intact. Something new and beautiful will result if we submit to his design.
ARE WE RE-SHAPABLE?
Adelaide Pollard was discouraged. She planned to do missionary work in Africa, but she couldn’t raise the funds to pay for her journey. At an evening prayer gathering, she heard an older woman pray, “It doesn’t really matter what you do with us, Lord, just have your own way with our lives.” Pollard went home that night and wrote the words of a well-known hymn:
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me
after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.
Do you ever feel like your life is a shapeless mass of clay? The Lord can make something beautiful out of the mess, but we must be “yielded and still” and let him shape our thinking, guide our decisions, and mold our attitudes. Are we willing to receive what God gives . . . do without what he withholds . . . relinquish what he asks for . . . suffer what he allows . . . do what he commands . . . and move when he says “Go”?
Personal Challenge: Are you stubbornly clinging to something (a fear, worry, heartache, goal, or ambition) that you should surrender to the Lord? Release it to the Lord in prayer and say, “You are the potter, I am the clay.”
I don’t know any writers who have produced so much good thought and so consistently as David Faust. Anyone can be good now and then or for a few years, but he has mastered the art of being always good and always available.
As to being clay in God’s hand, I am not so good at that. I don’t like Jeremiah’s image of being a pot to be molded, without having a voice in the matter. It sounds too much like Calvinism, which I loathe. I am not a clay pot, I am a living being, and I have desires and a will to be considered. I’m not the type to lie down and be walked on. Probably this has kept me from being used by God as much as I could be, but, as Popeye said, “I am what I am.”
I too read everything that has David Faust’s name on it.