Old Pottery and Gold Fillings

 
I am a new pot.  I am filled with crushed up old pots, and I hope a gold filling or two.  I also was made of very stiff clay.

I often tell my kids that if you look at a stop sign it is red no matter how often someone might tell you it is green or even how many people believe it is green.  (Unless it is a green stop sign, which would just be weird.)  The Bible is filled with Truth, and there are a few analogies that describe so poignantly how we are shaped, grown and made fruitful by the Lord.  Here is one of my favorites and how it applies to our lives

The Potter.

This one is very profound to me.  It is such a beautiful description of what God does in our lives and it took a while for me to learn enough about pottery to understand this one more fully.

1. God is the potter and we are the clay. Isaiah 64:8  8 Yet You,oh Lord,are our Father.  We are the clay and You are the Potter.  We are the workYour hand. A potter does a few things to his clay to work it.  He puts enough water to make it pliable and soft.  He also puts a fair amount of pressure on the clay to shape it, and he never takes his eyes off of the pot while He is working it.
   
   The working of the clay to make it pliable is God working on our hearts and adding the water of the Holy Spirit to make us softened.  Our hearts can become very hardened from hurts and the difficulties of life without God stepping in to keep us soft.
   
   When the Potter is shaping the clay He has to put pressure on it and pretty firm pressure.  We don't like change!  We like to stay the same shape we are, and we like to not have pressure put on us to change either.  In order for the softened clay to take a new shape the Potter has to put His hands on it and press in pretty firmly.  He has to have a plan for what the clay will be when it is complete and what the use will be for it.  If the clay has not softened enough the Potter has to press even more firmly to shape it.  The softer the clay, the easier it is to shape.
   
   When the Potter is shaping the clay, He can't take His eyes off of it for a minute.  He has to pay attention every second or it will fail and not take the intended shape.  It is very comforting to me as I feel the pressure of His hands, that He is paying particular attention to me as well.
   
2.   The potter can take all of the old mistakes in our lives and reshape them into beauty.Jer 18:4 He was making a pot from clay. But there was something wrong with the pot. So the potter used that clay to make another pot. With his hands he shaped the pot the way he wanted it to be.
   
   We make mistakes, and we mess things up, and we walk places we should not walk and do things we should not do.  The good news is that God can take those things and reshape them into the form He wants it to take.  I am awfully grateful for that.
   
   
3. Sometimes the things in our lives that are the most broken are used to create the most strength.  There is a process of tempering clay where old broken pottery is crushed up to add to new clay to strengthen it.  The old broken pottery is fully incorporated into the new and serves to add more strength than could be with new clay alone.
   
   I was so broken.  I was beyond broken and just a million pieces of mess.  God took all that brokenness and is using it to strengthen my new pot and to reshape me into a new creation. That is so miraculous to me!  The ugliest things He has used to create a new beauty.
   
4. There is a very old way of repairing broken pottery that makes it even more beautiful by using gold to mend the cracks.  When I think about this I think about Paul saying that we have the treasure in pots of clay  2 Cor:4  The beauty can only come through and show when the pot is broken.  Breaking is painful and looks ugly for a while, but the eventual beauty is far above the original.