There are a lot of things we can learn from the potter and how she works with the clay, lessons which we can readily transfer to our experience of God working with us. There is the beating that the clay takes to work the air out of it before it is placed on the wheel. There are the sharp instruments that dig out any imperfections that come to the surface. There is the dizzying whirl of the wheel itself, and the constant drip of water onto the work in progress. Sometimes there is piercing or etching to form designs or to inscribe the artist's name in the wet clay. All of that has meaning for our lives, but I especially want to note something about pressure.
One craftswoman described her work like this:
"Both my hands shaped this pot. And the place where it actually forms is a place of tension between the pressure applied from the outside and the pressure of the hand on the inside." She goes on to explain that that's the way life is. Sadness and death and financial problems and misfortune and failure—all these are things that influence our lives from the outside, even though we don't choose them. But there are things at work on the inside of us too, if we are women who have given our lives to God. Confidence in a faithful God is there, and things I can believe about myself because I know that He loves me, and the affirmation and support of friends. My life, like the finished pot off the wheel is the result of what happened on the outside and what was going on inside of me. Life, like the pot, comes into being in places of tension.
Throughout our days, we may be buffeted by stress, pulled by responsibilities, pressed by challenges that come to us from the outside. Unless we have strength of spirit on the inside, those difficulties will cause us to collapse under the external pressure. (Like most of my pots did!) Prayer, uplifting music, the Word of God, fellowship with other Christians—these help us to be renewed and restored within. Then when things press from the outside, when difficulties overwhelm us or we are wearied with the ordinariness of life, we are strong enough on the inside to hold our shape. We become sturdy, useful, and beautiful vessels in the household of God.
And news with great hope! God remakes vessels too, if we will be pliable in His hands. At the potter's house, the prophet Jeremiah saw what happens when a pot doesn't turn out right. "So he made it again another vessel." (See Jeremiah 18:1-4)
Probably there are very few of us who are exactly the vessel we originally thought we would become. We've been marred by our disappointments and our mistaken plans and even our failures. But our lives are not defined by our limiting influences: a handicap, a crippling emotion, a troubled family background (or a troubled situation in the home right now), a bad decision made in the past, a failure, shame over a personal or family "secret," lack of education, a child born at an inconvenient time, whatever!
From the point where we are now, we're likely never to become what we were so sure we would one day be! That's all right. It doesn't matter to God. He has a plan, and He's not wasting any time lamenting about what might have been. He's busy making another vessel. HE HAS A PLAN! He sees each of us as a beautiful, useful vessel of honor. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)
MaryMartha
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved
Art from http://www.sxc.hu/
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