Smashed and Remolded

As true followers of Christ, we do not need to be reminded that our life is not often the utopia we always want it to be.  I remember many years ago reading a poem that began, "God has not promised skies always blue, nor flower strewn pathways all our life through. . ."

Most of my life has been spent learning, growing, falling down and getting back up again, forgiving, trying to forgive, forgetting, accepting and moving on. If we stand still, we simply become stagnant and of no worth.

What I sometimes forget is that there is a sovereign or master Potter who is working the clay in my life as He pleases. I have watched master potters at work in the mountains of Georgia and I have watched students in our high school learning pottery work a blob of clay.  As they begin to masterfully fashion the blob of clay into a useful vessel, suddenly and without seemingly apparent reason, they smash the vessel into a blob and start all over again.  Each time they do this, the clay becomes entirely different.  I've learned that with gifted potters, there is a reason not seen or known to those who watch from afar, as to why the potter smashed the vessel that to me appeared near perfection. But each time they start over, and over, and over, the vessel becomes better and better each time.

The prophet Isaiah in chapter 64 had a pretty good idea of what our Father, our Master Potter, is trying to do in our lives.  "But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand." (v.8 ESV) He is the one who is shaping us and molding us into the image of His Son.  When we look in the "mirror" or others look from afar and think we look pretty good, be ready to get slammed back onto the pottery wheel of life to be remade, refashioned into a more beautiful and more useful vessel - one through which His great love can flow; one in which He can fill so that you will empty out that love, pour out His message of salvation and start over again.

And, by the way, that poem that I mention above, ends with these words, "but God has promised His undying presence and unfailing love."  May I find myself each day as clay, able to be molded and shaped in the hands of our Skillful Designer, a vessel fit for the Master's use.