Sunday Devotion- Hope For Lumps

Janet Rubin


The potter dipped his hands into the bucket of water, then pressed down on the gray lump spinning before him on the wheel. His palm flattened the clay, his fingers curled over the side, centering and rounding it. Those of us in the audience leaned forward in our seats transfixed as the lump grew and took shape beneath the potter’s hands…

No, I’m not talking about a viewing of the movie “Ghost!” Last night we had a guest speaker at church—a potter who uses his art form to illustrate the way God molds His children into useful vessels. The presentation was fascinating. First he showed us a lump of clay that had been sitting out in the air, and was therefore hardened and not workable. Much like us—when we become hardened toward God, he cannot work in our lives.

The potter showed us what happens if you try to make a pot without water. It becomes sticky and ultimately tears apart. The water is like the Holy Spirit, an essential without whom the Christian falls apart. The potter also showed us what happens if the clay is not centered on the wheel. It is unstable, and as it spins and you try to work it into a shape, it wobbles until…splat! Another messed up pot. A great picture of a life not centered on the word of God.

But the thing I really appreciated was what he would say every time the clay was messed up—torn, hardened, smushed. He’d say, “But God loves you too much to leave you like that, right?” And then he’d show us how the clay could be fixed, how the work could begin again. He did complete a lovely pot, but stopped when he was most of the way done, saying that many of us get to a point like that in our lives, where we think we look good enough. We’re doing lots of good stuff and we think we’ve arrived. But God loves us too much to stop working, and He continues, as He promised, molding us into the image of His son.

The Bible says that we are made in God’s image. I’ve always loved thinking about how we are creative because He is creative, and when I write, I think how cool it is that I am doing it because I am creative like Him. But the whole potter demonstration made me think about what is lacking in my writing. God cares deeply about His works, about bringing them to completion, about excellence.

Me? I’m lazy. Definitely a that-looks-good-enough kind of girl. I write something, get bored and want to move on, but if I were operating the way God does, I would care enough about my work to continue until it shines—trimming, shaping, smoothing for as long as it takes. In Dean Koontz’s interview last month, he said, “I believe that talent is a gift and that it comes with the sacred obligation to polish and grow it.” When I first read that, it made me uncomfortable, because if he’s right, I need to work a whole lot harder. And after watching the potter and thinking about how carefully God works, I’m thinking Mr. Koontz is right.

The mind-blowing thing is that the very flaws that hinder my writing—my lack of patience and discipline, my laziness—are things that God, the Potter, is working on getting rid of as He molds me- His sometimes dry, sometimes wobbly, sometimes hardened lump of clay.

The potter knows before He even puts the clay on the wheel what it is He has in mind to make, though the clay doesn’t know it’s destiny. The Potter knew He was going to fashion me into a writer. A novelist? Just a devotional writer? Something else? I don’t know yet (I’m just the clay.) And what has He in mind for you? We can be comforted to know that the One forming us has a perfect plan in mind.

Jeremiah 18:1-4 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.