Image by Tobyotter via Flickr
Everywhere I go I notice clay pots of all shapes, sizes and colors. It doesn’t matter if they’re a regular clay pots that are pedestrian in their uses sitting everywhere imaginable; perched on pedestals in a museum because they belong to a display of ancient artifacts; or in an art gallery that is showing a particular artist’s collection of work.
I’ve liked them for years because they’re so varied in what they do, they can function as a simple pot that is used to hold the basics of life, like water and food, as well as things of great beauty that add a finishing touch to a well decorated room whether that room be in the foray of a Ritz Carlton or a private home.
And, what they are designed to do dictates how they are formed, glazed and fired. A basic terra-cotta pot can be formed by hand or on the potters wheel and typically doesn’t have any ornate glazing, so, it’s just fired once and is ready to use in the most basic of ways.
Not so with pottery made in the raku way, which creates one-of-a-kind hand-made pieces with techniques that include, among others things, multiple trips to the kiln that could result in the shattering of the pots if not done correctly. Yet, if a raku pot is made and glazed well it can have the effect of coloration that changes depending on the lighting that it sits in along with the direction you look at it from.
There are multiple references in scripture to the clay and the potter, with us being the clay and the LORD being the potter. “Does the clay contend with the potter?” We are asked in Isaiah 45. In Isaiah 29 we are told that the pot turns things upside down, that it says the potter didn’t make it, before going one step further by saying that even if he did, the potter knows nothing.
I am always amazed how us little pots have the audacity to question what the potter is doing, and not only that, but tell Him who made us what He should be doing.
We very often look around and see what He’s doing with everyone else and wonder why He’s doing that with ‘thus and so’ and not us, or the other way around then give Him our two-cents ( sometimes more) about what He should be doing instead of what he is doing.
Now, I’m a firm believer in bringing everything to the LORD, even our questions about this, that and the other thing that could possibly include what he’s doing with others and ourselves. But, we always need to check our own motives for doing so, and make sure we’re not questioning His motives when we ask.
At the end of the day He is the potter and we are the clay, to be shaped and formed, fired and glazed for His purposes for us which are always good in the way the He alone is good.
“But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?'” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use.”
Romans 9:20-21
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