Clay

Remember when a few months back I said I was cleaning out my closets?  I was planning to go through old writings and fine tune them to post on this blog.  Did that happen?  Nope.  But that's okay, I'm starting now. I guess spring cleaning has become late summer cleaning.   

Here's something I wrote back in 2009.  I'll call this a "devotional writing."  They're just my reflections, my thoughts, my ramblings about God and me and the stuff in the middle.  

Critique all you want but I hope you'll be encouraged:

Is the value of most things in their utility?  The canyons and cliffs, the waterways and bright stars, do I appreciate their utility or their beauty?  

Is food [its flavor, the delight of the communion its consumption provides, its various ways of preparation and presentation] worthwhile only in is far as it is useful for my body?  No.  

But yet, that seems to be how I approach my life and God.  Do I value being ‘used by God’ more than my relationship with God himself?  Or do I truly believe that what I am able to accomplish is how my value is measured?  Oh how I need the value of my life to be redeemed from the dust of utility and instead be caught up daily in the love of Christ.

  It is Him alone who can transform my brokenness into wholeness, and it is His love alone that can rescue me from the slavery of worshiping this productivity idol.

I was reading in Isaiah 64 about how my righteous deeds are nothing but filthy rags before God anyways, and that I am like the autumn leaves, withering and falling, blown away in the wind.  I also read the well known line that, “I am the clay and you are the potter, I am formed by your hand” and again was reminded that there is little I can do for God.  

How silly of me to think that this life is about my performance.  Why do I measure the success of each day by productivity, or accomplishment?  

I was overwhelmed again by the knowledge of the great cavernous depth of my need for God’s grace.  I am not righteous, I am needy.  I am treacherous and ungodly.  I am a sinner: broken, bleeding, cracked and useless. I am that clay: a lump of hardened, dried, helpless, useless dirt.  

I dream of being a bowl to hold fruit or be a vase and hold flowers.  But the one thing, my perhaps only real accomplishment in this life might be just to hold still and surrender to the warmth of my maker’s hands. 

To remain, on that wheel, while he smoothes my rough edges and works in the oil of 
His love.  

Perhaps the point isn’t even what ‘function’ I will be able to perform after He works on me again.  Perhaps it is simply that He is making me into something beautiful so that His artistry can be revealed.  

After all, isn’t that what glorified really means?  That one day I will reflect the beauty of His redemption, His perfect work, His making this pile of clay into something from nothing? 

And so I will again invite His tender, firm hands upon me, "would You smooth out my anxieties and fears and saturate my bitter, envious, cracked self with the oil of Your love?  Help me let go of my desire to be functional and useful God, I just want to be loved and to reflect your love."