BROKEN VESSELS

 

 

This is a continuation of the previous blog “My Father’s hands”

I decided to trust God and believe that I was completed and that I could start pouring out His love to those around me.  It was great and the feeling lasted about two days and then I fell back into some old bad habits and I had a picture of me, the jug, being knocked off the table where I had been placed and landing on the floor.  My handle broke off and a few cracks appeared on my body.
I mentioned to a friend of mine that I had thought I was past the clay stage and had become a beautiful jug but now felt that the jug was broken and I was back on the potter’s wheel.

She wrote me the following little note “maybe God is just super gluing your handle onto Himself and His love”.

I could see Jesus kneeling down and tenderly picking me, the jug, and my handle up and gluing it back together again with His love.  As He ran His hands over my body the cracks disappeared and I was whole again.

It is a known fact that once something has been super glued it will very rarely ever break in the same place again.

Psalm 145:14 says “The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.”

A couple of months later the same friend wrote me another note.  This is what she said “By the way God would like you to know just how much He likes you.  As I am typing this He is giving me a sense of how deeply He cares for you.  That He took great care in making you and He is really rather pleased with how you turned out!  He also says to remind you that He is a God of awesome compassion”.
How encouraging to receive words like these from our friends.  We often feel so worried and stressed that God cannot get through to us so He places His message on someone else’s heart so that they can tell us just how much He cares for us.
Often all we can see are the imperfections, the bumps, the cracks and the areas where we have been super glued together.  God in His love is continually healing us and mending us in order that when He fills us up we will not leak.

A person who is dying of thirst and who comes across a jug holding pure water couldn’t care less what that jug has gone through or what it looks like because it holds life giving water that can be poured out.

God says in Joel that “…I will pour out my Spirit on all people”¹ and then in Romans it says “…God has poured out His love into our hearts”.²

We, in turn, need to start pouring this love out to others. 

We need to take the time to be filled up and this is done when we spend time in prayer and reading the Bible, by worshipping God in song or by just sitting and watching a beautiful sunset knowing that He has created this world for our enjoyment.

Once we are filled we need to pour out these blessings into other peoples lives.  We have to move and share ourselves with others otherwise the blessings inside us become stagnant and we become dull and stale.

Psalm 16:11 says “You have made known to me the path of life;  you will fill me with joy in your presence…”.
Psalm 81:10 says “I am the Lord your God….Open wide your mouth and I will fill it”.

A potter’s mark is a device used for the purpose of identifying pottery wares.

On an ancient Greek vase the following mark was found “Exekias made and painted me”.
Exekias was an ancient Greek vase painter and potter.
Isn’t that such a beautiful image.
One day when I die I want my tombstone inscription to read “God made and painted
me!”

 

1.  Joel 2:28 (NIV)

2.  Romans 5:5 (NIV)

MY FATHER'S HANDS

 

There is a verse in Isaiah that has always captured my imagination.  It goes like this:
“And yet, O Lord, you are our Father.  We are the clay and you are the Potter.  We are all formed by your hand.”¹
I have this wonderful image of God sitting on a wooden stool with the potter’s wheel positioned between His knees.  In His hands He holds a lump of clay specially chosen by Him from which He is going to form me.
As He puts the clay onto the plate He makes sure that it is centred and then He begins to spin the wheel using His feet while both of His hands start to mould and shape the clay.
As He works He prays unceasingly.  He speaks words of love, encouragement, joy and kindness into my life.  He starts to visualise the life He wants me to live.  So much thought has gone into the making of me.  As I begin to take shape in His hands He realises that actually there is something even more special He wants for me so He kneads me back into a lump and starts again.

Once the item of pottery has been formed it is then put aside in a safe place to dry.

Once it is dry it can be painted and decorated and then it is put into an oven to bake.
A close eye has to be kept on the item while it is baking to ensure that the heat doesn’t damage it. 
We have all been created individually by God.  Some of us are plates, some cups, some bowls, some jugs – it doesn’t matter what we are - we all have two things in common.
The fact that we were created by Him and the fact that we can all hold or contain something that can be poured out.

God decided He wanted me to be a jug.  He visualised me as a beautiful jug filled to the brim and overflowing with love and the ability to do so much good in the world. In His mind there is not a blemish or a scratch on me and He has painted me inside and out with beautiful bright coloured flowers – crimson, yellow, blue, orange and green.  I am so amazingly beautiful in His eyes because I am His creation.

In fact in Ephesians 2:10 it says exactly that “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”.

For many years I felt that in making me God had got stuck on the kneading and moulding stage or had forgotten me in the oven.  I also felt that during the process of making me He became distracted and that was why I was far from perfect.

I never seemed to be able to grow into my full potential, there was always a nagging feeling inside of me that something was missing and a lot of the time I did not feel that my life had much worth or value.  There were so many times when I felt such deep hurt and pain and loneliness in my life that I was sure He had forgotten me in the oven and that I was damaged beyond repair.
I longed to make a difference in the world.  To be able to touch other people’s lives and bring comfort and healing to them but always felt that I was not worthy.

Then one day I realised that I would never be able to do any of these things if I was constantly in the process of being made.  How could I offer anything of value to anyone else if I did not feel I was worthy and complete myself.

There is a verse that says “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works so that no one can boast”.²
This is the most wonderful verse in that it takes a lot of pressure off us to perform and if we truly believed what God tells us “I am the Lord who sanctifies you”³ we wouldn’t have the need to ‘work’ so hard at being Christians!

Photograph by Carrie Sandoval
1.  Isaiah 64:8 (LAB)
2.  Ephesians 2: 8 & 9 (NIV)
3.  Exodus 31:13 (NAS)