Moldable

Yet, oh Lord you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 64:8


“We are the clay.” Have you ever worked with clay? I really haven’t other than children’s clay. I have worked with dough, which is kind of the same idea. In either case the potter or baker is presented with a lump of inanimate material that can be shaped into any form that suits the person doing the shaping. On my shelves I have a clam, a dinosaur, a turtle, several little houses, a bowl and various other items shaped by my children’s hands in a high school ceramics class. Clay is inanimate. When we are presented with that blob of whatever goes into clay, it isn’t going anywhere. We can pick it up, put it down, shape, reshape, mash it all down and start over. Let me say it again, the clay isn’t going anywhere. It is never going to look at the potter and say, “Hey! I wanted to be a vase not a tea cup!” As the potter’s fingers work the clay molding it to the desired shape we never hear, “Ouch! Stop! I don’t want to look like this. You’re hurting me. Why me? Why not that other piece of clay over there?”

The verse says, “we are the clay” but maybe it should say, “we should be like clay.” The problem here is the same one that presents itself in Romans 12:1 where it says, “Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” An old friend of ours used to joke; “The problem with living sacrifices is that they can get up off of the table.” The same is true for human clay. Unlike actual clay we can argue with God, bargain with Him and attempt to coerce Him. When we see what He has planned for us or when we are called to serve, too often, too many of us start to tell Him why we can’t do what He’s asking.

This verse in Isaiah first refers to God as “our Father.” That makes it harder for a lot of us. Many of us don’t have the best picture of fathers. Often what our earthly fathers asked of us was wrong or detrimental. Father God most certainly does know best. The picture here in Isaiah is of a loving Father who wants to hold us in His hands and mold us into something beautiful, useful and purposeful. If we would sit still like a blob of clay and truly allow God to work in our hearts to fashion us to His liking our lives would be much more successful and infinitely more joyful. He is the potter and we are the clay. There are no better hands for the job of molding our lives. Are you moldable?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Not Really god, where are you?

My Offering

Selective Sight