fragile: handle with care

“Don’t get all hung up on your clay jar.”  A few Sundays ago, I was the distracted one getting up and down because my work’s on-call phone refused to stay silent, and the circumstances it presented demanded my attention.  So as my pastor ironically began to talk about “quit burying God”, I knew I needed to hear its message...but I had a very difficult time.  Thankfully, God knows how to communicate with each one of us and knows what we need to hear.  Those words, “Don’t get all hung up on your clay jar,” are what lingered.  

You see, it’s not that I don’t believe God can do anything...well, in a way, I don’t.  I’ve been hung up on my clay jar.  My jar has been dry, cracked, and sometimes broken.  And instead of seeing that God, my potter, can do anything, I’ve looked at my state and said, “how can this clay jar possibly be used?”  It’s a mind full of doubt instead of possibility.

I am reminded of this verse... “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand,” Jeremiah 18:1-6

God can take my fragile clay jar and mold me.  He can soften the dry spots, seal the cracks, and give me the newness I need.  I just need to let Him.  Instead of trying to keep going in my condition and slapping on the sign “fragile: handle with care”, I can place myself back in the hands of my Maker to be remade.  And so I am.